Pitufa.at

On the last day of our passage to Tonga we crossed the date line, so one entire day is missing from our log book and our lives. It adds to the confusion we experience living in the South Pacific: Summer is winter, the South is cold and the North warm, ‘Far East Asia’ lies to the West of us, ‘the West’ (US and Europe) is in the East and now on top of everything today is yesterday… When it’s Friday morning here, it’s Thursday evening in Europe (I hope I got that right, correct me if you’re better at this mindboggling concept )

We really enjoyed our stay in Niue, one day we rented bicycles and explored up north, another day we hitched a ride to the northern cape. The coast is dotted with caves and chasms–we are used to snorkel coral heads, this time we walked between them. We would like to stay a bit longer, but looking at the wind forecast for the next few days we decided to leave for Tonga tonight. We should reach Nuku Alofa in 3 days (320 nm).

Our HF antenna tuner drowned in its box under the radar arch on the way to Niue–that means no more blog entries and emails from Pitufa under way or remote places. Even worse, we won’t be able to get weather forecasts for a while, but we’ll try to replace asap. So no worries if you don’t read from us whenever we’re away from civilisation.

The designers of our boat focused on seaworthyness and performance, but didn’t pay too much attention to a comfy sofa–they just built watertanks and then put the cushions on top of them. Sitting on the sofa for a longer time (e.g. an overlenght movie) has always been a real trial for our bottoms. In Tahiti we bought a 5 cm matress which has been waiting in the forecabin for a rainy in-door period. Yesterday we started the project: We cut the thin matress and glued it on top of the old, tough one. The next step was fitting new covers and sewing them together (we still carry a few metres of the fabric we bought in Panama). After two days of fighting with unruly corners and resisting flaps we now have a bum-friendly settee opposite the table in the saloon. As the Pfaff (our trusty sewing machine) was already out to play we manufactured 4 new pillows for our bed and another 4 from the sofa fabric to make the settee even cozier.

The eastern side of the atoll consists of one long, narrow motu (7km long) and the people of the neighbouring island Maupiti (140 nm away) have divided this land into 75 lots that belong to different families. Most families leave their land unattended, but at the moment 15 people live here. Mostly they stay for a few months, collect as much copra as they can and return to Maupiti (the supply ship only comes twice a year, but some fishing boats bring supplies too and passing sailing boats also get parcels to deliver), but a few live more or less permanently here. Only two houses have solar panels and electricity, most others are very basic, rather open shacks with a cooking place outside, a bucket for a sink and a few matresses.

The people are fabulously friendly and generous. It seems there’s a competition going on who entertains more cruisers (or maybe we are the entertainment for them, as there is no TV, internet or telephone connection here). The first time we went ashore a young guy (Kevin, 26) who lives here alone spontaneously invited us for dinner (it turned out to be a feast with lobster and fish prepared in different varieties), two days later his neighbours (Salome and Ferdinand) invited us over and last weekend the family who lives at the northernmost house (Marcelo, Adrienne and their grown-up kids Hio, Faimano and Buaiti) invited all cruisers (7 boats by now) for a potluck party at their house. The people here spend 6 days a week with hard manual labour (collecting coconuts, cracking them open, pulling the meat out and drying it to produce copra) and Adrienne and her daughters somehow still found the time to collect thousands of shells and make elaborate necklaces which they handed out
to all their guests as welcome gifts. We keep repeating this, but the generosity of the Polynesian people is just amazing.

On Sunday the wind started clocking around (north, then west and back to south) and we moved around the atoll with it, so we got the chance to spend another day at the western motu with its bird colonies and now we’re back in the southeast corner. All boats have flocked to this protected area, because it will blow hard all week. We will do some indoor projects while the cold southeasterly is howling outside, sending best regards from the southern winter.