14 June 2010
Now into the last day of our mini inter island cruise we tuck into an anchorage (No 6), close once more to Refuge Bay. Tonga is a labyrinth of pretty islands each with its own little white sand beach. I love beach combing or "shelling" as it is otherwise known and in just two days have found four sand dollars, four treasures of the sea, my first ones ever. The weather has been so settled, we have not seen a drop of rain. Every morning though you might have been fooled into thinking there had been a recent downpour, so saturated were Voyageur's decks with the morning dew. The sailors' belief that wet decks in the morning mean no wind, dry decks the opposite has always held true for us and influenced our decision of where to go many a time. So if the theory is still right, then tomorrow morning we will wake to dry decks and head for a mooring once more within the snug harbour of Neiafu and make our preparations to leave toward the end of the week. Over the course of the last week David has been monitoring the weather as there was some indication that the winds would be increasing. But I just look skywards. For two days now I see the strong wind clouds, great sweeps of feather light clouds, curled like the deft hand of a painters brush. This afternoon the whole sky clouds over, the water no longer an azure blue, is steel grey in the sunset.
Susan Mackay