Where's Aratika? Where's Pacific Bliss?

Where are Macy Boat and Six Pack? Where are Free Spirit and Nomad and Enki and Triddar?

For that matter, where are Miles and Melissa - people so wonderful that they don't even have to live on a boat for us to imagine them here?

That's been our occasional litany as we look out on the heaving anchorages of Vava'u.

Tonga is awash in anglophone yachts (the francophone are presumably all up in Wallis). But we don't know any of them. So we sometimes look out at all the floating evidence of other peoples' dreams come to life and long for some of our good friends from seasons gone by to be in the anchorage with us. That's just part of the sailing life - you're forever going out and making new friends. Elias is feeling it particularly hard - he was ready to devour the 13-year-old Kiwi kid that we met a few days ago.

But for now, at least, we are happy in a little anchorage all by ourself, tucked between two islets that go by the impressive names of Lautala and Nukulahanga. Sometimes it's nice to step out of a crowded room where you don't know anyone and just look up at the full moon with the person you brought to the party...