Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Niuafo'ou (Tin Can Island), Tonga

UPDATE:   For some reason, this post has the all time high views out of all the posts.
I my feeling is that there is not too much information available about Tin Can Island.

In order to help future visitors, I have looked back and found the location where we anchored.
If you drop anchor at   15° 35.520'S  175° 40.560'W there will be nice black sand at 50'.
On the way out, when heading for Fiji, watch out for the Zephyr Reef.

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We had a fairly nice 2 days sail out of Savaii with the usual rainshowers.  The wind did as forecast and dies so instead of motoring for 4 days we went to an isolated tip of an active volcano of an island just a little southeast of our course to Fiji.  The last eruption was 1947 and the crater is filled with water.










There is no bay to anchor in but there is a little point of black lava sand 50 feet down that the anchor will hold.  You really only want to be here when there is no wind or seas and that is exactly what we had.  Sometimes luck is in our favor.  This place is rarely visited by cruisers and the supply ship comes on a very irregular schedule.

It rained for an entire day and we watched a few TV shows and a movie.  The next day we ventured to shore, pulled the dinghy up on the black sand and walked to town (about 2 hours).  Town was deserted, we met the pastor of the Church and walked back.



The winds had started to pick up and when we got back, poor Tortuguita was pitching in 1 meter seas and lucky to have not dragged the anchor.

We got the dinghy aboard and left in a hurry.

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