Ocean Echo 1: Kingdom of Tonga - Tonga Islands

Dear friends.

Kingdom of Tonga turned out to be interesting country to visit. There are 3 island groups. Tongatapu at the South, Ha'apai in the middle and Vava'u Group at the North. Most popular among cruising boats (yachties) is Vava'u Group. The Islands are all beautiful. This area is still very active with volcanic activity.
I was lucky to have arrived a few days before an Agriculture Show. Their majesty The King and The Queen of Tonga were there to greet local people. They did not have an Agriculture show for 2 years. I have enjoyed to see and learn local culture and ceremonial dresses of man and woman. Local farm products and fisheries display were very interesting.
I have spent most of the time visiting local islands of Vava'u Group. I did sail South for a few days to visit Ha'apai Group, which looks and feels more like Tuamotus in French Polynesia. Most of the islands in Vava'u area are surrounded by deeper waters. Large coral reefs to the E, NE are creating natural barrier for most of the islands, when prevailing E, SE winds and swells come in. Tongan ridge creates a lot of shallow areas in the middle of blue ocean, good for pelagic fish. Islands get annual winter visits from Humpback whales. Diving and snorkeling is OK in most areas. However there are not too many fish around, not even on coral reefs. Coral formations are nice. Swallow's and Mariner's caves are quite impressive. I have seen some black/white coral snakes and cuttlefish (similar to squid/octopus) couple of times. Niue Island had a lot of b/w coral snakes, which are nice and harmless.
Vava'u Group gets visited by many yachts each year, before they continue-on to Fiji or New Zealand. I will be sailing to N. Zealand by mid October. It will be busy time in NZ with many urgent repairs and purchases. Temperatures will be more reasonable for boat projects. Passage to NZ is expected to be difficult, will just have to deal with it.

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Maintaining this blog could by complicated time to time, because Internet signal/connection for uploading pictures, will not be as good/fast as it is in large cities/communities. Please, excuse my poor writing skills and grammar. Google translate does good job converting text to other languages.

I hope, that you will find something interesting in this blog – enjoy.

Jara (JJ) Holcman s/v Ocean Echo 1

(old blog's address - http://oceanecho1.wordpress.com/)

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