Our stay in American Samoa was a month long; it always takes longer to clear in and out than one expects. We enjoyed our stay there even though the harbor is filled with garbage when it rains and when the wind blows from the east, which it usually does, we got the smell of baking fish. Starkist Tuna has its processing factory here and it provides employment for most of the people living on the island. The island itself is very beautiful but seems to draw bad weather.
We had a wonderful tour of the island one day with some other cruisers and were able to go from one end to the other. It was on “White Sunday” which is a day set aside to honor children. The day consisted of the family dressing all in white and, after attending church, sitting down to a very large meal and then sleeping away most of the afternoon with another meal in the evening. Samoan people are quite large, very friendly and most eager to help in any way. They stop you on the street and ask if they can help in any way.It was nice to visit a store similar to Costco/Sam’s Club and stock up on some of
those luxury items like hamburger, cranberry juice, sliced turkey, bacon, corn on the cob, snacks and ohhhh those baby carrots!When we first entered the anchorage, we saw a boat we had known in Mexico several years ago, KUMFY. The next day the owner, Mitch Hart, dropped by to say hello and told us he and Rise had been in American Samoa for 5 years. Mitch is an engineer working on a major remodeling of the LBJ hospital and Rise is working for the National Park Service. We visited with them at least twice a week. Mitch begged John to come work for him for a year as he is in desperate need of engineering help to complete the job. He said it would be no problem getting Linda a job at one of the local banks. We said thanks, but no thanks. We are too old to go back to work! We want to keep cruising before we have to give it up.
One day four of us cruisers decided we would try making one of the local dishes. We went to the market and bought taro leaves, onions, and coconut to make the dish. Two of us were busy washing the taro leaves and a small piece of one broke off of the leaf Linda was washing. She put this small piece, about the size of a little fingernail in her mouth and chewed it and swallowed. Immediately, it felt like she had eaten fiberglass. The feeling of little tiny splinters under her tongue and down her throat. Turcan, one of the other cruisers who is from Turkey, took a small bite as she couldn’t believe what Linda was saying and had the same problem. Gert, from Denmark, took a big bite and his wife Carolyn took a small bite. We all had the same reaction. The only thing that would help was a piece of bread and large glasses of water. We then looked on the Internet and learned that you should NEVER eat raw taro leaves, as there are calcium “splinters” which go away when the taro is cooked. We cooked the taro and it was very good but it sure was a painful learning experience.Another day we took a bus over to the other side of the island to a small village and walked out on a rocky point that was quite beautiful but very warm. We walked through a forested area and found several papaya trees that obviously did not belong to anyone as we could see that the birds were eating the ripened fruit. So we picked a few papayas and headed
back to the place where the bus driver said he would pick us up. While waiting for the bus, a fellow that had been on the bus on the way over to the village invited us for lunch at his home. We declined, as we had wanted to get back as we knew another boat we had met in Costa Rica was coming in and was only stopping (they thought) for one night. So we missed an experience that could have been fun but one never knows. At the bus stop we met a woman with a little girl about 2 years old. We talked and told her of the man inviting us to lunch. She said that is very common in Samoa. She was the daughter of the chief of the village and was taking her daughter to the doctor for a checkup. Her daughter’s name is Amazing Grace and she has a twin brother named Mercy. Obviously the church is very important to the people of Samoa!On the way back, we asked the bus driver to let us off at the top of the mountain pass. We wanted to have a leisurely
view from the top down into the bay and surrounding mountains and lush valleys. It was a beautiful sight but we had a very steep hike down the mountain. A few days later, Linda met the woman with the little girl in the post office. She asked how we had gotten back to Pago Pago and we said we walked down the hill. She was quite amazed that we had done that. She also told us that her daughter kept talking about the “palangis” she had met, meaning us. Palangi is used quite frequently to describe a “white” person versus a native in many of the islands.We had finally received our packages from the U. S. via the good old US post office and waited several days for a good weather window. John checked the GRIB files (computer-generated surface wind and pressure maps), the net weather, and local radio weather. Finally, they all
agreed that it was a good time to go the 375 miles to the Vava’u Group of Tonga. We had squalls in the harbor on the way out of Pago Pago, which were quite common, and headed out to the open ocean where we again had squalls with torrential rain (at least, it was warm rain!). We figured once we were away from the island, the weather would improve as all the forecasts had predicted. That was the roughest 375-mile passage we have ever had! As it turned out, a convergence zone (low pressure trough) had moved south over Samoa and followed us all the way down to Tonga. All our friends followed 
our progress on the radio nets and were happy when we arrived safely, as were we. So much for paying such close attention to the weather forecasts…The talk of Vava’u was all about weather as everyone was waiting for the “Go” to head to New Zealand. We just wanted to lick our wounds and settled in for a rest. Our “wounds” included the breaking of the genoa’s roller furling line while the sail was reefed way down due to the high winds and seas. Getting the wildly flogging sail down in those conditions was not a piece of cake but we finally managed it and raised the storm jib in its stead. This slowed us down somewhat, and we lost several miles towards our destination by running off downwind. We did not want to be out in those big seas and 25-30 knot winds another night and happily made it in to a wonderfully calm anchorage just b
efore dark. The other “wound” was a problem that we didn’t find out until we were safely in the anchorage. When John went up the mast to replace our flag halyard, he found small cracks in the lower spreaders. This was the same problem that kept HAWKEYE from going to the South Pacific back in ’97.So, once again our plans have changed. We are not able to go on to New Zealand until we get new spreaders installed. We can order the new spreaders but are not inclined to do so now. If you have been listening to the news of the Kingdom of Tonga, a feudal monarchy in which the King appoints ten of the fourteen cabinet ministers and the hereditary nobility the remainder, you will know that “pro-democracy” rioting recently took place two hundred miles south of here in Nuku’alofa, the capital of the Kingdom.
We are in Neiafu, Vava’u Group, in the northern islands, which is the second largest city in Tonga. With 80% of Nuku’alofa’s central business district burned to the ground, there is very little business going on so getting anything sent in (everything has to go through Nuku’alofa), is next to impossible. Linda’s daughter, Trish, sent Linda’s prescriptions the day before the coup started and we are still waiting for that package to arrive. There are some other cruisers going back to the states in a few weeks and will return in a month so we are hoping they will bring back the new spreaders for us.Other exciting news from the Kingdom of Tonga is that a new island recently arose from the ocean deep, on a sea of
floating pumice, about 60 miles west of here. On top of that, Cyclone season is now underway with a new storm, Yani, forming to the west of us. It is 1,500 miles away and is not considered a threat to this area - for now. From the above, you could be forgiven for considering Tonga to be politically, geologically and meteorologically unstable, and hardly a fit place to spend the next several months. In fact, we are enjoying the beautiful island anchorages of the Vava’u group and the friendly people here. We have obtained a cyclone mooring
in Neiafu Harbor, a good “hurricane hole”, which consists of two concrete blocks weighing about two tons each plus a lot of heavy chain. John calculates that the mooring should be good for at least 100-knot winds. If and when a cyclone is approaching, we will dash in, secure HAWKEYE on our new mooring, strip the boat of all sails and canvas to minimize windage - and get a hotel room ashore for the duration of the cyclone!Meanwhile, we will celebrate Thanksgiving today with a turkey dinner attended by 5 different boats. One fellow is from Spain and said he has always wanted to attend an American Thanksgiving as he has only seen it in the movies! Should be fun and interesting. Best wishes to you all for turkey day.
Our hope is to visit New Zealand for about 6 weeks in Feb-Mar via airplane instead of sailing there. Plans are being made already for celebrating Christmas here with an “Umu”, which is a feast where the food is cooked in a pit in the ground lined with hot rocks or coral and covered with banana leaves. It will be a group effort and should be lots of fun.
Just in case you get the impression that cruising is all about lazing around in exotic locations (only partly true), some of our friends have had some really bad
experiences. One Canadian couple from Vancouver, whom we met in Ecuador, lost their boat in the pre-dawn darkness on the reef surrounding the island of Niue. They both escaped with minor cuts and bruises by climbing a steep cliff and fighting their way through dense brush to the nearest village. Sadly, their uninsured boat was a total loss. An English couple had the bad luck to require major medical treatment while at sea – not once, but twice! Happily, they arrived in Opua, New Zealand this week and are now getting expert medical attention. A German couple, en route from Samoa to Kiribatis, suffered a broken steering cable in heavy weather with the skipper incapacitated by a kidney stone! Fortunately, the great majority of passages are completed without incident.
Best wishes to all of you for a great holiday season and exciting adventures in the new year. Linda and John s/v HAWKEYE
P.S. We learned at our Thanksgiving dinner that we have to wash the “spinach leaves” we get here in strong bleach water, as there is a snail that leaves a slick on the leaves that causes meningitis. You can believe those leaves are
clean now!
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