Landfall, Vava’u, Tonga

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TLDR: We are on a mooring in the southern part of Neiafu harbour, after 9.5 days and 1,330 miles of sailing. The last few hours were painful as a stationary squall just north of Vava’u caused the winds to go gusty and on the beam. We dropped all sail and with the poles and all their rigging still up we could not really clear everything in a heaving sea for a beam reach. So we motored the last 20 miles…

Not a great way to finish, but we are here, in daylight, and ready for a beer! We’ll worry about check-in tomorrow!

The wind finally backed a bit more to the east yesterday morning, and we followed it at first to ensure we could make a decisive change to the downwind sail plan. By midday we were 1.5 miles south of the direct course and the wind was still backing, so we set about striking all sail and rigging the two poles for the goosewing setup. Conditions were not great, with a 2.7m confused sea rolling the boat in all directions while we were wrestling with heavy gear on the foredeck. We initially left the main and genoa up to help steady the boat while we set the big spinnaker pole to port. With conditions increasing the risk of someone going overboard, we were in harnesses and life jackets, tethered onto the jackstays for the duration. An hour and a half later the staysail was hoisted and the #3 genoa unrolled. Peace descended as Sunny Spells scooted off towards Vava’u at 7 knots.

Conditions were pretty good, and we averaged 6.6 knots overnight, directly towards our destination.

On the equipment front, the eutectic tank in our fridge has on occasion spilled sickly fluoro green coolant into the fridge over the last few months. Yesterday we repacked everything into the freezer (nothing like a bit of redundancy on a boat) and I disassembled the cover over the eutectic plate. It appears there’s a design flaw that allows the coolant to be hydraulically pushed out the little standpipe tube that holds the temperature sensor thermocouple. While I always have the filler cap loose, the coolant has quite a high viscosity so appears to seal the threads anyway. When we are on energy saving mode, the plate cycles through a wide temperature range, and the expansion of the air above the coolant causes a pressure increase, pushing the coolant up the standpipe. I replaced the filler cap with a short nipple that will allow free flow of air into and out of the tank and added coolant to the tank to get it up to the correct level. Hopefully that is that…

But I digress…

Crossing the International Date Line

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The wind and sea state continued to be challenging all Friday, with the wind speed increasing as the day wore on. Mid-afternoon we took a third reef again and rolled half the headsail away. It was early hours of Saturday morning before the wind started abating and the sea state slowly improved. Of course, it’s always feast or famine, so we were soon motoring, with our hopes of a Sunday arrival receding.

The weather continued awkward, with regular gusts to the mid 20’s on the beam. It was also quite variable, so there’s a lot of shaking out of reefs and then re-reefing, all in an effort to maintain a decent rate of progress, as we need to maintain 6.5 knots to get there in daylight tomorrow. The sea state has been lumpy and we regularly get slapped by a breaking wave on the beam or port quarter, and it is pretty rolly. Not our favourite passage so far.

The ships clock was set forward to UTC+13 as we crossed the International Date Line (at 169.5 degrees west here) in the early hours of the morning (so instead of Saturday it is now Sunday). We are currently ahead of pretty much everyone on the planet, and a day older, which we can ill afford!

I had not appreciated just how arbitrary the date line is. Apparently, according to my mate Chat-GPT, there is no international treaty that defines the line and each country in the area has just made up its own rules, often out of convenience. The line on the map is just an interpolation of the resulting jigsaw.

Fun fact!

Bora Bora to Vava’u

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We left Bora Bora at sunrise on Sunday, headed Vava’u in Tonga. We are routing north of Maupihaa atoll first, in case the forecast turns nasty for the Cook Islands /Tonga. That way we can head for Samoa instead. The wind was initially light, but filled in to around 15-18 knots so we were making good miles. With a swell below 2m and evenly spaced it was very pleasant.

We are dealing with faults on both our DC-DC chargers, so we have to manage power closely. Fortunately, it was quite sunny, and our solar panels managed to get the batteries back to 100% every day.

The wind died just before 10AM Tuesday, marking the arrival of the rain front associated with a low-pressure system hundreds of miles south of our position. The 9AM weather update also showed potential nasty weather moving in over the Tonga area within 24 hours of our predicted arrival time. Bobbing and rolling at 2 knots in barely a breath of wind was not an option, so the motor was started, and we were soon chugging along at around 5 knots towards our destination.

In the afternoon we bagged the staysail and stowed both poles, as downwind sailing is not in our future for the next few days. We motored for almost last 20 hours but, on the upside, the remaining functional but erratic DC-DC charger kept pumping out a steady if disappointing 30 Amps (from our 115 Amp alternator).

The forecast rain started in the late afternoon on Wednesday (why always just as it is about to get dark??) and became torrential with gusty headwinds to 25 knots around 10:30PM. The captain was summoned and, after surveying the scene for an hour, declared that there was nothing to be done, leaving the first mate, by now in life jacket, to keep the ship steady. The rain came and went all night, accompanied by gusty southerly wind. Some diffuse lightning was also visible to the north, but the radar showed nothing except a large cell more than 36 miles to the north.

At daybreak on Thursday the rain eased, and the wind abated to around 5 knots (of course, it was now daylight), revealing a pretty flat sea. “It won’t stay like this”, we said, and sure enough, things started going downhill shortly after. The forecast was for SSE winds at 12 knots, steadily increasing to 16 knots through the day. The reality on the water was a rapid increase to around 20 knots, gusting 25 of winds from the SSW, i.e. forward of the beam. The sea state also rapidly deteriorated into the “washing machine” state. In addition, we the difference between our heading and actual course was 10 to 15 degrees, and it appeared we were making a lot of leeway, requiring a further turn into the wind. We were soon crashing into and over waves with only the triple reefed main and half the small headsail. The winds were gusty too, with even the small sail plan groaning and propelling us to over 8 knots during the gusts.

In last night’s update a deep and extensive low-pressure system south of us had materialised, with the forecast high being squashed to a small ridge. Dave, the skipper on Warrior, who is 100 miles south/ahead of us, sent us an update from his onshore weather router pointing out that the low is visible on the satellite imagery and would torment us for a while longer but that the impacts would abate over the next 24 hours.

It was difficult to keep any sort of pace up in these conditions as Sunny Spells would just launch herself off the top of each wave and crash back into the water with every passing swell. We had to slow down and turn downwind a bit to preserve boat and sanity.

Conditions very slowly improved through the night, mostly as the waves became more regular and our wind angle improved ever so slightly. It is now Friday morning, and the wind is still gusting 26 knots on the beam, so we are not out of the woods just yet.

The next phase

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Sunny Spells is now anchored in the still waters of Phaeton Bay, Tahiti. We motored down here from Pointe Venus this morning in light air, entered the lagoon through Passe Tapuaeraha — threading between sets of surfers catching the long left-handers — and made our way into one of the calmest, most secure anchorages we’ve seen in months. The boat barely moves and it’s a perfect place to pause, reflect, and start building what comes next.

We’re particularly pleased with how well our new cockpit displays performed during the Pacific crossing. The two displays installed either side of the companionway when we were still in the Med ran non-stop for the entire crossing without a single reboot. Conditions were full-on at times — decks wet, wind on the beam, occasional green water over the rail — and the units shrugged it all off. Salt spray, sun, heat, and constant use: no glitches, no drama.

Over the course of 4,000 miles, the displays earned their keep. The high-contrast, legible graphics meant we could easily read them from across the cockpit, even in bright sunlight or in the pitch dark of night watch. The self-dimming brightness was flawless — it always seemed to be just right, whether under the noon sun or a moonless sky.

The interface to our masthead windvane was a noticeable improvement over the old ST60: a smoother and more stable wind angle display, damping was effective without lag, making the readout far easier to steer by.

The touch interface also came into its own. Even when wet with spray, the touchscreen remained responsive. And because we could configure either screen to show any data, we could always get the info we needed at either helm — when had steering we both prefer a heading display straight ahead with the wind on the other display.

I’m convinced these displays will fill a void in the market. My goal for the coming weeks: make it even more useful, more intuitive, and even more like the touch devices we already use every day.

What’s coming:

  • A navigation display with a large heading, a CDI, and SOG, COG, and DTW feeds.
  • A dedicated true wind pointer on the wind instrument screen, so we can see both true and apparent wind at the same time, rather than toggling between them.
  • A UI that does away with the physical buttons. The touchscreen has proven itself — even in rough, wet conditions — so we’re embracing it fully with a swipe-based interface to move between screens (or “apps”), and tap targets on-screen (like units or values) to change them, just like you would on a smartphone.

It’s exciting to be in a place where we can pause and build. Phaeton Bay is quiet, sheltered, and still enough for a floating workshop. Over the next few weeks, while Sunny Spells rests, we’ll be coding, testing, and bringing these new features to life — right here on the water where they belong.

Photos to follow — for now, it’s time for a swim, a stretch, and maybe a glass of something cold. After all, landfall has its perks.