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Starblazer - 28/05/2014 – We’ve lost a day in our lives!



We bade a sad farewell to Niue on Sunday at lunchtime, our 72 hour stopover
had come to an end.

We hired a car on Saturday to tour the island and stock up on duty free!
The whole island is an amazing coral structure rising about 30 metres out of
the sea with some interesting coral features. We went, first of all, to the
Talava Arches described as a moderate to hard walk. The pathway through the
trees was dotted with coral outcrops to be negotiated and led to a large
open cave with stalactites and stalagmites. We descended through the cave
to reach the reef at sea level to get a good view of the huge coral arch
jutting out to sea. It was rather a scramble! From the same car park we
took a different path down to the Matapa Chasm (easy) where fresh water
enters at one end and sea water at the other. This place is reputed to be
the private bathing place of the kings of Niue. The snorkelling was quite
good though it was peculiar to see through the layer of mixed fresh and sea
water, looking like a bubbly glass. Our third destination was the Toga
Chasm at the opposite end of the island (moderate to hard). The signpost
said 1km, 45 minutes, which perhaps indicates its rating. There was a
fairly long, easy walk through an ancient coastal forest then the challenge
really began. The coral footpath, smoothed out with concrete in places, was
narrow, twisting, steep, sometimes uneven steps and always surrounded by
coral pinnacles, culminating in a wooden ladder with 26 rungs. We made it
down to the bottom where there is a beach formed from sand blown in as the
sea is still a little way away beyond more coral outcrops. Palm trees grow
on the beach, reaching just about to the top of the chasm.

Rather against the odds, we have sailed all the way to Tonga and have about
12 miles still to go to the finish line. The GRIBs were forecasting very
little wind from yesterday evening onwards, which would also back around the
compass. In the past 15 hours the wind has gone from north northeast
through west to southeast. We were expecting to motor, but so far so good
though we have yet to see if it is possible to sail down the west side of
Vavu’a. Yesterday’s highlight, or should that be ‘lowlight’, was nearly 5
hours of rain and it was quite chilly. This is definitely not what we came
here for!

Tonga is not quite at the 180o longitude but has chosen to change its date
along with its neighbours, Fiji, and New Zealand though it maintains the
same clock time as Niue. Officially Tonga is described as UT +13 whereas
Niue was UT -11. Either way, the local time is currently 0910 and it is
officially Wednesday. Tuesday 27th did not exist for us.

Meals on board continue to be good, Sunday evening I cooked Skipjack tuna
steaks from the freezer with mashed potato and carrots, followed by yoghurt
and jelly. It was rather cool and wet yesterday so I made porridge for
breakfast and we had soup and tortilla wraps for lunch. In the evening we
had pan fried spiced chicken breasts with mash and green beans (tinned)
followed by the last of the yoghurt and jelly with a spoonful of Niue honey.

Joyce

p.s. Nothing seems to have broken on this leg. Yippee.


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