We spent a lazy several days bobbing about in the “Blue Lagoon” off of the island of Foelifuka. The colors were mesmerizing and it was one of those places where a main attraction is the cockpit view.

Although we walked the beaches and swam in the water, one of the nicest things about the place was sitting in the shade of our cockpit watching the scenery. Even Carol, my highly energetic husband, could properly chill out in this type of beauty.

It was the kind of weather and place that inspired lattes outside in the morning, cooking on the BBQ for dinner, long drawn out sundowners and every day sunset watching.

Tonga was a bit chilly when we arrived but the summer furnace is starting up and that is definitely no longer the case.

We had one day so calm that we were able to dinghy the miles over to the Coral Garden which was on the backside of another anchorage we had already visited.

I can give the coral garden a thumbs up. Not world class perhaps but if you are anchored nearby, a definite nice snorkel with a variety of live coral and lots of reef fish.

Hover over images for descriptions:

This is a story of the kind of chance meeting that often happens when you travel. It is also a good example of how you can leave your life open to those type of meetings even when you aren’t traveling.

We made a friend on Craigslist. No, not THAT kind of friend ;)

While shopping for used kiteboarding gear, Carol struck up a conversation with someone who turned out to be a kiteboarding, sailing, rock climber. His name was Dan and he offered to take us climbing the following week near Lake Tahoe and so, we went (Livia – left, Carol – right).

The rock was gorgeous, the climbs carefully selected by someone who loves the area (and was willing to play rope gun). And the apres climbing, cold beer river soak, sunset-over-spires watching and greasy tacos were a perfect finish.

 

Thank you, thank you Dan. May we meet again somewhere more tropical.

We left Lucky Creek for Jarvis Island – relatively close by in the Broken Group. We poked into a tiny anchorage where we needed to stern tie.

For the non-boaters, this is a good time to explain anchoring. You are aware that we drop a big metal hook off the front of the boat with chain/rope attached to it and it keeps us from moving far. We still move of course, in a circle around the anchor whose radius is approximately the length of the chain/rope we let out.  The idea is that you let out more than three times as much rope as you have depth. This keeps your angle to the ground low enough that the anchor has a chance to bite into the ground. If you imagine only dangling enough rope that the anchor barely touches the ground, you can see how that isn’t going to work. Also, by putting out a bunch of chain, in addition to keeping the anchor low, you add a bunch of weight on the ground. In light to medium winds we will often only be pulling on our pile of chain, not even on our anchor yet.

Sometimes, you want to put out a certain amount of rope, but you can’t swing in a full circle because there is crunchy stuff or because there are other boats and so you decide to stern tie or stern anchor. Stern tying is taking a line to shore and tying it to the back of the boat to limit where you’ll move to one quadrant of the anchoring circle. In the chart below, the M’s in circles are about where the boat was (our anchor was ahead of there) and the brown bit with the line to it on the right was the rock where we tied the stern. By the way, the chart is slightly offset from our GPS. We were definitely closer to the shore on the bottom of this picture than the markers indicate – another reason to trust your eyes.


This all sounds simple enough, right? Except, as anyone who has tried to stern tie knows, done inexpertly, it can be a gong show.  Our good friends Ryan & Christine experienced (and participated in) one of our early attempts at stern tying in which we kept almost drifting into another boat.

The issue is that there is a period of time after you drop your anchor and before you tie the butt up where you have to avoid drifting into the very crunchies which are in your “drifting circle” and that you are stern tying to avoid. Meanwhile, one of you is hurrying out in the dinghy with the rope to secure to the rock, or tree or special ring installed by the park.

But you can only hurry in the dinghy so much. Just to make it even more interesting, it is a good idea to enter a small rock strewn anchorage at low tide when you can see the rocks…but that means that the place you are going to tie to is now high up in the air. For example, watch me climbing 5.3, in rubber boots, on kelp and barnacles to our stern tie location. In this case I’m removing the line. One way to avoid having to remove the line is to use a long enough line to loop it around and all of the way back to the boat. This way you can cast off (remove the line) without leaving the boat although you still have to climb up to get it around the first time.

The first task is to get out of the inflatable dinghy without rubbing it on the sharp barnacles while holding onto the rope for the dinghy and the rope for the stern tie.
 
Next I navigate the barnacle encrusted rocks which have a nice slippery layer of kelp over the sharp bits.

Finally we have some “normal rock climbing” on damp rock to the tree we tied to:
 
Now I just have to get back to the dinghy :)

Here we are successfully anchored and stern tied.


We spent a rainy lazy two nights here. Lovely spot. Nothing too exciting to report.

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Originally uploaded by Livia

We had a lovely day of climbing outdoors the weekend before the marathon. Pictures are in this set.

Photos from our last few days: