[password] pilot25041
[position] 18 41.9s 173 55.74w
[status] Wednesday 26th September late afternoon and anchored to the west of Kenutu island.

We had a wonderfully quiet Sunday evening and night in Hunga lagoon on the mooring buoy ....... no anchor chain dragging across the ground to disturb our beauty sleep, then on Monday morning we had a fair bit of rain again, although this didn't stop us from cleaning and flushing the small outboard motor, as we don't think we'll need it again on this trip ....... probably tempting fate here, but hey ho! Then on Monday afternoon the weather picked up a bit, Barry went ashore mid afternoon to explore Hunga village ..... after a steep climb up the hill to the village it turned out to be just the normal for Tonga, plenty of free roaming pigs and wildlife, evidence of various foreign aid to the community through solar panels and water catchment etc etc. The wind stayed in all day, so we decided not to leave the comfort of our mooring buoy, and had the fish Barry caught on Sunday for dinner, still not sure what it was, as it had a texture very much like fillet steak and not like t
he tuna we've been eating to date ........ but whatever it was it was absolutely fabulous!

Tuesday morning the wind was still blowing and we decide to move to explore somewhere else, as we had just exited through the narrow entrance to the lagoon on the ebb tide, within 300m we nearly ran over a whale, it had two 'local whale watching' boats in near proximity and despite Allan putting our engines in reverse the whale was virtually directly in front of us when it breeched the surface ....... again a spectacular occurrence for us all, we then spent a good hour watching the whale and the local boats putting snorkelers in the water for their "swim with a whale" experience! We count ourselves very lucky to have seen these fabulous animals up close on a number of occasions, we then put our sails up and had a great sail between the islands, before eventually going through a narrow reef to get to an anchorage between Mafana and Ofu islands, this was a great location as there were no other boats any where near us!

This morning we left the anchorage and motored around the bottom of Ofu and through another narrow reef to get to where we currently are, anchored just to the west of Kenutu island. We all went ashore for a good walk this afternoon, climbing through the undergrowth to the far side to see the waves crashing in to the rocks, whereas we are anchored in an almost flat calm despite the wind blowing 12-15kts all day. Tomorrow we're going to go back around to the 'Old Harbour' to top up on fresh supplies, this will save a 5hr detour around the islands to get to the other (main side) of Neiafu! Apart from that Barry went snorkelling this afternoon, but found nothing much to see, we've had great weather and everything is well on board.

Our more observant followers may have noticed that we've managed to upload a few photos of our recent exploits to the blogs ...... enjoy!

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