Ready Set Wait!

Tuesday was 'fuel' day! An early ferry into town, making the rounds of the Port Captain's office, customs and BP fuel depot were the steps involved in lining up delivery of 200 litres of dutyfree diesel to the wharf. Then ferry back to Pangaimotu and bring Toketie back to town to take on the fuel! It would have been much easier if we could have tied up to the wharf to do the paperwork but the only mooring is med style and with the breeze across the harbour it would have been more trouble to set
that twice than taking the ferry in! But we managed and then rafted to a catamaran, pumped the diesel out of the drum into our jerry jugs, lugged them across the catamaran and siphoned them into our tanks. Fortunately the rain held off for those two hours! Back to the anchorage in time to catch a special ferry back to town to go to an Italian restaurant for dinner with four other boats.
Wednesday was paperwork day again and we went in and cleared out of the country officially! But don't tell anyone as we are still here, waiting for the right weather window to leave. Tomorrow is All Hallows Eve and a party will be held at Big Mama's and Saturday night Big Mama has invited all the 'yachties' in the anchorage to a barbeque to celebrate her son and her husband's birthdays. So if we don't get out of here for a few days, we should be busy.
We also sent the water jugs in by ferry to be filled and transported them back on board. The infrastructure in this port is pretty bad. There are no taps for water at the dock and no pumps for fuel. It all has to be trucked down and loaded by hand or pumped out of the tanker truck in the case of a larger quantity.
But in spite of all this, we like Nuku'alofa and are glad we stopped here. Some boats left directly from Neiafu and passed us yesterday without stopping but a squall hit them and turned three or four of them back 100 miles to do some repairs in Nuku'alofa.
So other than the final stowing and lashing, we are ready to go. We are expecting McDavitt's weather report and routing plan in the next few days and will then head south to Opua, NZ!