Beach House – Anchored – Niatapatopu, Tonga….

Dear Friends and Family,
First, congrats to all our friends in Florida for surviving Hurricane Matthew. We had a report of about 100 mph gusts in Stuart, Florida!
Another bit of excitement, we heard a medical emergency on another boat about 500 miles west of us. He was being assisted by the ever present and ready Pacific Seafarers Net (Ham Radio 14300 at 0300 UTC). We\’ll find out the hopefully happy resolution this evening if we are on the net.

We had a pretty rough night. Wind on or just forward of the beam with a short sloppy chop, winds 17-25 knots.
Crew had a few reefing drills. We were told the channel here would be very narrow with a few bommies right on the leading marks.
It wasn\’t that narrow and the bommies are properly marked – not on the leading marks. Navionics Charts were spot on as were the \”leading marks\”.
Just before we entered the channel, we had a bit of a start when our port engine wouldn\’t start. We think the battery is the issue and were able to start it with our cross connect from the starboard engine and the chargers on. I\’ll keep it charged now daily when we use the generator.

As we expect a \”blow\” here (top of the tail from what will develop well south of us), we will move to Motu (small island) \”Hakautuutuu\” and hide behinds it\’s southern flank. Go ahead and say that name 10 times real fast.

Nice depth over there and completely ringed in a large swimming pool of a reef. I don\’t expect more than 30 knots and that only briefly, but who knows!
The weather models don\’t agree. We should be about 550 miles north of the system and \”best of\” to our friends in Tongatapu which looks to be more or less ground zero (so far?). If the weather cooperates, we may move the one day sail down to Vava\’u, Tonga (after the blow) as Nikki really wants to see \”whale country\”.

We\’re the only boat here and we\’ve got to go scrounge up customs/immigration as it\’ Saturday and no one seems to be much around ashore.
KIT,
Full Reports later,
Scott and Nikki

AIRMAIL YOTREPS
IDENT: N6ABC
TIME: 2016/10/07 21:39
LATITUDE: 15-56.50S
LONGITUDE: 173-46.09W
COURSE: 206T
SPEED: 0.6
MARINE: NO
WIND_SPEED: 15
WIND_DIR: ESE
CLOUDS: 15%
VISIBILITY: 20
BARO: 1016.6
AIR_TEMP: 31.7C
COMMENT: Beach House – ANCHORED – Niatapatopu, Tonga