Ha’ano Island

 We had a single tack upwind sail from Ha’afeva to Ha’ano passing by several reefs and through a couple tight passes.  The sail went easily but we arrived after dark around 7PM.  The night was dark with complete cloud cover and there was next to no light on shore.  Our goal was to anchor in sand between two spurs in the reef.  It took two tries and an hour motoring around very close to the reef edge as marked on the chart before we were successful in anchoring.  I used a satellite photo to find the sandy spot while trying to correlate our position between the sat photo and marine chart shoreline.  Once anchored we were pleased to be able to rest after a very long day.  We made a quick dinner of spaghetti with pesto and garlic bread before retiring early to bed.

The next day we took the dinghy and our snorkeling gear to the beach.  We walked to town chatting with some residents on the way.  One suggested we continue on the road to the next town to have a bit longer walk.  Another gave us a bag of oranges from her tree.  The oranges are small and green skinned but look the normal orange colour when peeled and taste much the same as we are used to.  We walked down to the town dock which turned out to be in the process of being rebuilt due to the tsunami damage.  Leaving town we continued down the road to the second much smaller town and the beach at the end of town.

A very neat house with well tended garden in town.  The fence is to keep the pigs out.

Ha’ano school

Our anchorage near “Mushroom Rock” at Ha’ano Island

While at the beach by the second town a group arrived in a taxi.  One of the group was a white man and  when chatting with them we found out they were a group of Seventh Day Adventists doing some training of local adherents in Tonga.  They offered us a ride back to the dinghy which we accepted.

A Tongan taxi 🙂

Once back at the beach where we left the dinghy we decided to have a snorkel on the reef between the beach and True North.  Near the shore there was not much to look at but out closer to the reef drop off the coral cover and diversity greatly increased.  It is evident the reef had been badly damaged by the tsunami but was recovering quickly.  Out at the reef drop off there was a tremendous diversity of fish species in large numbers.  The sun was shining brightly making the fish sparkle with their many colours.  It was an excellent snorkel with warm water, hot air temperature and a short dinghy ride back to True North for a late lunch and rest.

The Seventh Day Adventist group came down to the beach to get a view of True North at anchor.  Our snorkel was from this beach between Mushroom Rock and True North.

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