We departed from our overnight anchorage at the crack of dawn this morning to make the short return trip to Nieafu in order to complete customs and immigration and make our preparations for the trip to Fiji: well the permanent crew made the preparations, while we were ushered ashore.
We had hoped to see King George’s parade, but confusion abounded as at first it seemed to have been put back to Tuesday only later appearing to have been completed on Monday after all!
All we really know is that the King went off on a - presumably mammoth - cava drinking session at 10am. Good chap, he will be seeing stars by now! With or without the good King, we enjoyed a relaxing morning, taking cappuccino and a supplementary breakfast in a café, which proved so agreeable that we decided to spend our last remaining Tongan currency there on burgers and beer for lunch - conforming to type once more! In the interim, we visited the remaining parts of the town we had not seen, including the rather bizarre sight of pigs snuffling for food on the muddy beach of the « old historic port ». I don’t think this requires more elaboration.
We departed amid a frenzy of paparazzi activity as a BBC World TV crew buzzed round the ship in a launch filming the departure of the elegant Soren Larsen - truly elegant this time round as the crew resisted the temptation to fire water bombs at them…it would appear limits were reached.
And then whales were seen.
At the time I must admit I was busy trying to hang my washing off the ship’s rigging, while squinting through the fierce Tongan afternoon sun trying to see the little black spots on the horizon,
but eventually we did slowly catch up with them and were rewarded with the most incredible sight of at least three, some say six, whales passing around the bow, sounding, twisting and turning as they came, before pulling off the same show down the port bow.
It was an amazing sight, as they came past the port bow you could clearly see the size of them - arcing gracefully as they moved swiftly through the water.
I managed to get some good video of them which I’ll post online once I have a good connection, but even this good film doesn’t quite convey their size. Takes your breath away, quite literally.
Anything else now sounds fairly mundane and boring, but then again, how can it ever be so in the South Pacific? We are back at sea with a three and a half day voyage in prospect over to Fiji, more or less due West from Tonga: homeward bound! It feels good to be back at sea again, the pleasant rocking of the ship, the reassuring creaking of the oak bulkheads, and the crunching of the cabin interior bulkheads against the outer ones - often when the ship rolls it feels like it is going to give way… Actually I realised why it rolls so much when I was out swimming the other day as I saw it has an incredibly flat bottom - so it’s probably like one of those cross-channel bathtubs after all…but with a dash more class and elegance!
On that note I should sign off since our watches have been rotated and I am now on the 12-4 meaning my first one will be tonight in 4 hours time. Different watch and slightly different routine, I like the free time in the evening already, but we’ll see how I feel at 4am! Bread making duties await me at 01h30 so another gastronic skill to add to my bow. When will it cease I wonder??
Rob
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