Exploring Vava’u, Tonga by sailboat offers an exhilarating blend of busy adventure and relaxation. 🌴 We alternated between relaxing in anchorages and lively town experiences, seizing opportunities to sell our unneeded items, like our spare outboard, spare compressor and even our extra pork (just ask in the comments). Photographing our sweet Sea Bella for sale (now sold to a family from Alaska!) and marveling at the majestic flying foxes, we found joy in every moment. The busy Saturday market added a touch of color and warmth to our journey, with new hats, shells and a trivet. Our biggest and last task was clearing out of the country and fueling up. This was a 4 hour job, since the fuel arrives on a truck from afar and needs to be called in a day ahead. Cruisers either pull up to a gas dock (sometimes a sketchy dock like this one) or vote for hauling it in Jerry cans. We typically try to sail to anchorages, but here in Tonga, we found a maze of little islands to go around, as you see in our tracks. We would sail a bit then turn, finding the wind at our nose (for the non sailor friends, one cannot sail into the wind).
Our town experiences were quite opposite to French Polynesia, as we ate out many days since the food and prices were great. Yoga continues to be a hit, on a dock, barge or under a giant Banyan tree. Overall, Tonga enchanted us, and we eagerly anticipate our next visit on a catamaran!
Howdy from Fiji! We are in the lower Island Vet Letu is massive!
We are in Fiji in a marina now and life is pretty busy! We have many plates being juggled at the moment. But, the short of it is, yes we are under contract to sell Sea Bella. Bittersweet for sure but definitely the right move, timing, location…The new owners are a young family from Alaska who want to continue our path and head west! They are keeping her name!! Strange though, they won’t be coming down till next May. We need to strip the boat and store everything below for cyclone season.
If all goes well, we move off Sea Bella about July 20, with suitcases in hand and move on to babysit a 54 foot catamaran for 8 weeks-Nirvana. We can cruise around Fiji, and Derek visits us then too! Living on a cat will be a change, fun and very weird as we will feel homeless. A good trial run for us as well.
We then will fly to Ca, mid September, readjust, breathe and continue the process of selling a house in Atascadero (listed yesterday) and searching for a catamaran in Virginia (if all goes well). A real 3 ring circus!
If we find the perfect boat, hahaha, then we will cruise the Caribbean , San Blas, then through the Panama Canal, head through some new places in southern French Polynesian and back to where we left off, just a year or 2 later. Haha! Is that a lap and a half around the globe? 🌎
Our World Adventure 