As per the plan we arrived around lunch time on the 25th only to discover that Tonga has a public holiday on Anzac Day so we had to sit at anchor for the day in the quarantine area which wasn’t too tough as we drank beer and went swimming before having a very big sleep after the 4 days at sea. 

 

The passage ended up being 530NM and we ended up sailing for 24 hours and motor sailing for the rest. 

Our current position is 21:08.064S 175:11.257W

 

After spending a leisurely afternoon on the boat, the next day we were requested by the Harbour Master to move to the Customs Dock for clearance.  There are no floating docks in this part of the world and the customs dock is a concrete wall, which also used to be the fuel wharf, and has seen better decades.  As we backed into the wharf we did note that it was infested with what looked like cockroaches on steroids so we made sure that the boat was sitting a suitable distance from the wharf!   During the course of the morning we had many of the Kings Representatives come to process our arrival – there were quite a few of them but it all went quite seamlessly.  The first representative was Duke the Customs & Immigration man who asked us to fill in many forms, stamped our passports and asked for a beer which we duly handed over after the business was completed.

 

Next to show up was the Quarantine man who elected to stay in his car parked on the wharf, obviously he wasn’t interested in checking out the boat or our stores but did get Mark to load our rubbish into the back of his car.  No beer was required for this transaction.

 

The last representative of the King’s Men was from Health who gives you the ‘Certificate of Pratique’ which is very important as it means we get to lower the Yellow Quarantine Flag and raise our Tongan Courtesy Flag and officially welcomed into Tonga.

 

During some of these transactions Mark was off to the ATM to get some cash as we needed to pay for some of these services and hadn’t been able to source any Tongan Pa’anga in Fiji. 

As no fuel bowser was to be seen at the so called fuel wharf, Mark then headed off, drums in hand, with Sione, the first taxi driver to greet us, to get some much needed diesel.  Meanwhile back as Sally HQ Di was dealing with the carving man who had been stalking us all morning and made his presence felt as soon as the yellow flag was being dropped.  After some serious negotiations we had some very nice whale bone carvings and were a few dollars lighter.  Mark did have to tell him that enough was enough after he returned to see if he could sell some more to him...  During Mark’s travels around the mean streets of Nuku’alofa with Sione he was also informed that he has 12 children and was also keen to sell us some carvings!!!

 

After all the activity and excitement and the threat of a cockroach invasion we elected to head back out of the harbour to spend the night on anchor.

 

We are hoping to head into town in the next day or two get our communications sorted, extend our visa so that we can stay for 4 months and also do a general reconnaissance to see what is available.