Moving on

Now that we've had Minerva to ourselves for nearly a week, eaten 2 fresh lobster, taken awesome shots at at day and night from the reef, have snorkeled up and down the reef many times, let Charly fly a couple of times and we're short of fresh produce and fish it is time to move one. A disturbance with quite some wind is planning to build up here within 3 days so that's another reason to head out for good.
We have very much enjoyed ourselves here even though it was quite uncomfortable for a couple of days when we had winds between 25 and 30 knots with respective waves having built up between the breaking waves and the anchorage. The reef is an average of 450m wide and we're about 350m from the reef so the wind has a fetch of about 800m to build up waves. It is still a good protection from the outside waves and boy have they smashed against the reef some times.
Marcus has done some boat jobs every day, I did some sewing, built a light-reflection-shield for Charly's controlling unit, watched some video courses of my composing program and started working on new music. We've got lots of film material for a Minerva short movie, so that's the next project in combination with the music. Ah, so much to do...
But first things first. We're leaving tomorrow morning, trying to catch some nice size tuna outside the reef and then head to Tongatapu. As the wind is more easterly we have to sail against the wind. But since it's been quiet for 2 days now the swell should be not too bad and with 10 knots if wind I don't expect big wind waves. It's only 1,5 days to sail up there, so no big deal. We're glad we left New Zealand when we did, else we would still be stuck there like all the other cruisers who stayed behind (e.g. our friends on SV Kupere). With the strong wind coming down they still can't leave NZ, so they have to wait another round, most likely another week or so..Will let you know when we arrive in Tonga.

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