Ha'apai

Sunday morning we pulled up the anchor to make our way south to the Ha'apai group. The day before when we sailed to Ovalau from Neiafu, we had put in a number of waypoints to get us safely outside the fringing reefs around Vava'u. Early Sunday morning we upped anchor and got underway. The sails went up immediately and after one gybe to put us on port tack, we followed our track to get out. The wind was ESE so we had it just forward of the beam and we trucked along between 6-7 knots under genoa and mizzen only. In fact we didn't even take the sail cover off the mainsail. By daybreak, the wind had freshened and we took a reef in the mizzen and rolled up a bit of the genoa. The seas were 3 meters with breaking tops with a fairly long period between them. They were however just forward of the beam so we occasionally we took a good spray over the bow. We had 65 miles to cover before dark so we made sure to keep the boat speed up. The challenge was to get to the island of Ha'ano at the top of the Ha'apai group before dark, hence the early morning departure. As we sailed along, we both realized that we really had made very few early morning departures (i.e. before dawn) on the entire trip. After puzzling it out we figured out that the first time we pulled up anchor in the dark was in Bull Harbour on the North end of Vancouver Island last year when we were getting ready to go around Cape Scott and explore the west coast. The second time was when we left Niue to come to Tonga, and then we only had to slip easily off the mooring. As it turned out, we had lots of time for the trip. The winds stayed constant and we had the anchor down by 15:15. We had until about 19:00 before it would have been uncomfortably dark. The anchorage at Ha'ano is a large bite of island between two reefs. We followed the course given by the photocopied cruising guide and had no trouble. We would be lost without that photocopy. We also had to photocopy charts from that we borrowed from a Kiwi couple. The charts we had did not have enough detail and the electronic charts are not very accurate here. When Jan and Tony come in October, they are bringing charts for the Tonga group that they are borrowing from mutual friends in NZ.
We had to check in formally in Ha'apai so we Monday morning we upped anchor again and set sail for the village of Pangai on Lifuka Island. This is the administrative centre of the group. The challenge is that the anchorage and approach is very shallow and littered with shoals so we picked our way in carefully. Again, mostly under sail, the winds have been very cooperative! We got the anchor down outside the breakwater before lunch. After getting some food in us and getting the boat cleaned up a bit, we headed to shore to find Immigration, Customs and the Port Authority. We found the main government complex, realized we were too early (lunch from 12:00 to 13:30) so we wandered around the village a bit. It's very peaceful, so unlike Neaifu. The people seem more relaxed, and the pace was a lot slower. When we did get to customs, we thought we would have forms to fill out etc. Nope, just hand over the form we got from Neiafu and that was that. Immigration was pretty much the same. It took us maybe 5 minutes for both and after a handshake and welcome to Ha'apai, we were on our way. We had forgotten about the Port Authority. When we got back to the dock, we wandered over to the main building on the pier. One guy stretched out having a snooze and a lady was busy creating souvenirs. She was the one in charge of the Port Authority and had us sign in. Everything was so relaxed and informal. Today we will move a bit south (maybe 5 miles) to the island of Uoleva and stop for a awhile.

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