A Tropical Winter Solstice
Our first day aboard was full of sunbathing on the foredeck, safety briefs from Skipper Matt, a stunning sunset onboard and a delicious welcome dinner at our favourite local spot.
The crew!
Day two started with an early run for our fresh foods shop at the local market a few blocks away. Unfortunately for us, we only realized after spending half our food budget on a few onions and a bag of sweet potatoes, we should probably try out a bit of haggling. And even more unfortunately for us, this was quickly followed by us realizing we were all very bad at haggling. Kāren and I were quite pleased with us managing to get four cabbages for the price of three and decided to call it quits there. We spent all the budget and found half the shop list, including a few mystery vegetables and questionable sweet potatoes. Matt referred to the whole thing as 'a good learning experience' which I found very kind.
The local market for all our fresh food shop
Back on the boat we had a bit more safety brief to go over, then had everyone’s favorite team bonding activity that is stowing Salt Lines industrial sized dinghy to prep for passage. We weighed anchor late afternoon, beginning our sail training on our way out, managing to set both headsails, the main and mizzen, then put in a reef and a jibe within the first hour of passage. During all this excitement Melissa had prepared a lovely dinner for us which we all appreciated greatly and then settled into our night watches. Throughout the night our wind slowly died and we dropped the sails one at a time, leaving the Yankee up as long as we could until at 2 am we finally had to furl her away and put the engine on. I then put everyone of strict reef watch as we were reaching Ha'apai, and having a titanic-like situation with a pristine coral reef my first night sail as mate on Salt Lines was not how I intended to start our trip. Between the heavy tea consumption and early morning biscuits, spirits stayed high onboard despite the rolling boat and hours of motoring.
Hoisting the outboard to be stowed for passage
Liz and Melissa during our first evening of sail training
When I woke up in the morning we were happily motor sailing, reaching towards our last waypoint to turn East towards Pangai. We enjoyed the blue skies taking turns helming and trimming sails, everyone feeling much better in the sunshine after the long night. We anchored in Pangai at lunch and revisited our team building to launch the dinghy to run Matt ashore to visit customs on our behalf. I stayed onboard for a swim along with Liz, Ken, Martyn, Karen and Denise. After our swim, Martyn, Ken and myself tackled taking apart and servicing our mizzen winch that was giving us grief on our sail last night, while the other bashed out a much needed clean below deck.
Expert winch servicing
Our shore team returned and we set off to our anchorage for the night, an island call Uoleva just South of Pangai. As we came into the bay, the full moon was rising over one of the most pristine beaches I’ve ever seen, as the sun was setting behind us. I even saw a green flash as the sun went down, however no one else seems to have seen it, so conveniently that cannot be confirmed. We all enjoyed the peace and quiet of our anchorage, the full moon and excellent company. Everyone is in bed by the very reasonable hour of 2100, catching up on our beauty sleep in preparation for the weekend ahead of exploring, paddleboarding, snorkelling, fishing, and whatever else we can come up with.
The moonrise over Uoleva
Melissa taking in the sunset at our anchorage
Cheers, First Mate Liv.
PS: Skipper Matt here - For the safety and sanity of all those reading this blog I have correct Liv’s American spelling!
