Wednesday 12th September

Pangaimotu,
Tonga

21 07.471 S
175 09.750 W

The horror of the day was that we ran out of water. We hadn’t been making any in the harbour as it doesn’t look too savoury to begin with; luckily we had our spare 5 gallons in the container on deck so we poured that into the tank to get by until we could fill the tanks later in the morning. Around 09.00hrs we were just about ready to leave, we started the engine up and I cast us adrift from the boat that we have been rafted up to for the last few days. Our first top was at the fuel dock where we filled our jerry cans (having emptied them into the tank before leaving) whilst at the same time we ran a water hose from the tap to fill our water tanks. The water must have trickled in, it took forever but at last we had full water and fuel tanks and spare cans on deck. Gerry paid the fuel bill and we cast off from the dock motoring out of the harbour and across the bay to Pangaimotu Island, a distance of 4 miles. Once we cleared the harbour we were surprised at the wind, the forecast had been for 20+ knots and we had been so protected in the harbour that we hadn’t noticed that the wind was blowing that hard. Once we were in the lee of the island though we were once again protected from the blowing. We dropped our anchor and it set immediately, we then sat in the cockpit eating lunch and making sure that we weren’t going to drift off unexpectedly. There were just 3 other boats anchored nearby so there was plenty of room for everyone to swing in wide arcs if the wind got up higher as the forecast was suggesting. The rest of our day was spent reading, checking on our weather charts for the best time to make our crossing to Fiji and just veging out. Gerry offered to take us ashore for dinner but the hassle of putting the dinghy in the water off of the foredeck was beyond either of us and we elected to stay on board and eat at home. As the evening closed in the wind began to pick up speed and was averaging around 27knots, happily our anchor was very firmly planted and we didn’t move at all. Our latest weather report makes it unlikely that we will be leaving here tomorrow but we will be checking again in the morning for the update.