We had to be at the dock in PolePole at 9am to meet Oleni, our very friendly Tongan helper, who had 14 twenty litre, old cooking oil containers, at the back of his truck. With our 3 jerry cans, we ferried diesel back and forth to PolePole to load her up with nearly 500 litres of diesel. There are no fuel docks in Tonga, so we had to go to the Petrol station a couple of kms away. Luckily Rowan had filters for putting the fuel into the tanks, as they got so clogged up by the end, he had to throw them away. It took most of the morning to do this, plus Rowan had to have a major clean of the deck as the wind kept blowing the diesel all over the place as he was pouring it into the filters. A horrible job, on a horrible old rusty dock. I did a grocery shop with the help of Oleni, who was very friendly. He has 8 kids and 3 adopted kids who were abandoned by his wife’s sister. He says their staple diet is rice with coconut milk and sugar, which the kids all eat before they go to school. Roy, Rowan’s cousin sent a message saying he was bringing lots of meat from NZ, I only got the message after buying a whole lot of meat. Oleni was the happy recipient of quite a bit of our more dubious local meat, which he was very pleased about.
We headed back to the anchorage and had to have a bit of a tidy up, and put away, and deflate the kayak and paddle board. I had to get Roy’s cabin cleared and made up. This took us all afternoon.
5pm we were invited to drinks on Yuva, a couple we met briefly in Samoa and then Neiafu, and are heading to NZ tomorrow like us. They are sailing an Oyster that they bought new many years ago and kept in the Med for ages, it was immaculate, in that respect we are so different to the majority of yachties! An interesting couple, she is a red head from Turkey and he is American, but both have been living in the Uk the same amount of time as us, 36 years! Her father after he retired from Mobil, where he was obviously quite high up, has retired and is growing Pecan nuts like my dad did. Her dad is still alive and is buying huge farmland in northern Portugal where he has grafted Pecans onto Walnut stock and is having great success, better than in Turkey where he lives. Lots of interesting stories over 3 bottles of wine and the most delicious roasted pistachios from Turkey! Like us she is making sure all the nuts are eaten before NZ as they will be confiscated there. I have just less than half a packet of pecan nuts from the farm in SA.
Oleni was picking Roy up from the airport and bringing him to the dock where we refuelled. Roy’s flight was delayed and luckily we knew before we set off across the bay. Roy had hassles getting through immigration with a one way ticket, and Rowan’s covering letter wasn’t quite correct. I was exhausted and collapsed into bed as Rowan said he was happy to go on his own. I thought I was an essential torch and light holder but Rowan said he could manage. I was very grateful as a long dinghy ride in the dark across the bay in a bit of wind was very unappealing. I didn’t hear the men come back sometime after 11pm.
Rowan and the cooking oil jerry cans
Our very helpful Oleni
Out at our anchorage is very scenic, but Rowan said the water was disgusting, he used his snuba to go under the hull and finish cleaning
The 20 odd boats all waiting to go to NZ
Sunset drinks on Yuva
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