Broken Stay to Tonga

that was a day and a half I could have done without, apart from the excitement of going over a 9.5 km hole! I sailed without motor when there was enough wind, so did 2.5kn through the night. I spent a lot of time poking sticks into the lower fuel tanks, measuring and doing maths. The motor stopped earlier than I'd hoped, the way the tanks and pipes are set up means the motor can't actually get the last of the fuel unless you are on a completely even keel, which is rare for a boat on the water. I set the header tank for the genset up to feed the main motor then pumped fuel from the bottom of the tanks with a hand bulb. The header holds five litres so I could always be sure of at least two hours motoring when I had it full. The maths were saying oh-oh so I cut the motor and sailed in the afternoon, but light wind and a more northerly direction meant that a lot of the sailing was just taking me closer to the breaking reefs on the north of Vava'u. Ended up only clearing the island by one mile instead of the three or five I planned, but the weather was calm and I had five litres in the header. All the slow sailing meant entering the channels to the harbor at night, but I had a full moon in front, GPS showing where I was on the chart and the radar. luckily the radar worked almost all the way in, and confirmed that the charts are some 200 yards out, so my track went across quite a bit of land. (This is quite common with charts, they were made before GPS, so cartographers were not always quite sure where they were. Now they could easily correct all the charts, but it would cost money.) Neiafu has very clear channel markers as you go into the harbor, so although it's a very narrow entrance I had no trouble finding my way, then dropped anchor in totally calm water for the first time in three weeks. The last of the fuel was up in the header tank and I arrived with less then half a litre! Apart from all the maths, I was making plans B,C and so on all day but luckily plan A worked out. Beautiful smells in the air, frangipani, some sort of burned flour smell and other flowers.