While the formed breads rest a last time before being baked, I’m catching up again on Tongatapu.<\/p>\n
After leaving SY Donella and her crew to go and see Bigmama, Christian and his crew lifted the hook and left the anchorage for the Minerva Reef. They sailed through another passage, which I decided not to use as it didn’t look so safe to me. However, it’s the shortest way out and can be sailed with easterly winds.<\/p>\n
We met Bigmama, who was sitting under a tree, and asked her what interested us. First thing we asked if she can deliver a 200 l drum of diesel to our boat for refueling. It turned she doesn’t do that. So this information we got was wrong. However she offered us her 2 20 l jerry cans, which we used next day. Asking about the possibility for a Tonganese dinner, she also declined. Since the last cyclone hit her place she doesn’t run her restaurant anymore. A pity, but we could understand.<\/p>\n
Next we went from Bigmama directly to the little harbor to look at and dock our dinghy there. The little harbor is about 1 1\/2 NM away. After a 15 min tender ride we arrived in the harbor and docked the tender in the “Little boat harbor” inside the little harbor. Docking the tender was easy, but my first impression about docking MaRe in the little harbor was very negative. Luckily Renate saw us coming in and called us. Later I looked around and could not identify a place to dock MaRe safely.<\/p>\n
We started asking our way to the customs office. The people were very friendly showing us the right way. Along the street, which had better days, they are a few shops with one selling also groceries. Under a few trees some people sold sweet and other southern potatoes. A kind of market which we passed had booths selling all kind of things but no fruits and veggies.<\/p>\n
We confirm and found the Port Authority Office and went into ask for the procedure we have to do here and learned that at the day before departure we need to come and pay the harbor fees also we only anchored 1 1\/2 NM outside the harbor.<\/p>\n
Finally we found the right customs building and the right counter. We asked what we need to do and got several forms to be filled in and the advice to come next day at 1400 h to do all procedures at once.<\/p>\n
We also went to the fuel company and got there a paper, which needs to have a customs stamp to get duty free fuel. The company would deliver a 200 l drum to the harbor and provide us a hand pump; the rest is with us.<\/p>\n
With this information we walked back the dusty road towards the little harbor where our tender is docked. We passed again the brand new building of the Tonga Navy and I wonder what kind of navy fleet rings has.<\/p>\n
At the grocery store, which had one double sided shelf for food items and a few more for other things, we bought some things we could not get in Vava’u. That shops have no electrical light inside but only the daylight from the entrance, appears to me as a typical feature of the Chinese run shops in Tonga.<\/p>\n
The evening on board was relaxed. MaRe was perfectly anchored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While the formed breads rest a last time before being baked, I’m catching up again on Tongatapu. After leaving SY Donella and her crew to go and see Bigmama, Christian and his crew lifted the hook and left the anchorage for the Minerva Reef. They sailed through another passage, which I decided not to use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-15"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}