Pago Pago American Samoa

We are almost finished with our stay here as time is getting short to get to Australia by November. Doing lots of provisioning taking advantage of the good prices and selection. Bought a new portable cd player as the one in our laptop died, the salt environment is hard on everything.

Today we went to customs to get our clearance papers and pay our port fees to leave the country. Hoping to head out tomorrow for 'New Potatoes' the first island in the Tonga group. that is not the real name but no one can spell it or say it.
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See previous article Titled Suwarrow and Pago Pago for more info on Pago Pago. It is good harbor to anchor in though did get quite windy at times. Call port control when entering and then anchor or take one of the few buoys available. We then dinghy over to customs dock and the large building has four different offices, Port captain, Quarantine, agriculture and cant remember you have to visit, a slow process and to finish you have a 15 minute walk up the road for the last checkin I think it's customs and when you leave they hit you up for about $160 dollars. There was great Internet service here and cheap on boat, if you got a booster. Good laundry on shore at head of bay good cheap bus service, we filled our propane tank here no problem.

Suwarrow Northern Cook Island and Pago Pago

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We left Bora Bora July 21 with full sail up sailing pleasantly along wing on wing. This lasted for the day and by 10 pm we had 2 reefs in the main and unusually rough seas. This continued for the next few days and the last night we needed 3 reefs in the main because of the strong reinforced trade winds and many squalls coming through. This made for a tiring passage. Dorothy did pretty good with her sea sickness, just getting a bit queasy once. She ran out of her Bonamine and did not find the Stugeron quite as effective.
A Booby bird fell into the cockpit one day startling us and putting a long scratch on my arm that bled a bit. I disinfected it right away. The silly bird came back about 15 times trying to land in the cockpit or the end of the boom rather than the bow their designated spot, away from us. I think there was something wrong with this bird as he was clumsier than they usually are.
Saw no boat traffic except one big fish boat for the 6 days.

We entered the pass into the lagoon for Suwarrow at 9 am. Anchored in 37ft at 13 14.811S and 163 06.477. Charlie Charts describes entrance pretty good, though over states the difficulties we thought.  What a beautiful spot, the main island is about one half mile long and sits on a 10 mile coral reef that surrounds the lagoon, making the anchorage fairly calm. Just a tiny spec by itself in the middle of the Pacific ocean. There is nothing on the island except one small rustic building where the caretakers live. They call it the Suwarrow Yacht Club.

James and Apii the two caretakers came out to our boat after we dropped anchor and came on board to check our passports and officially check us in to the Cooks. At first glance they looked like a couple of hells angles without there motorbikes. But they turned out to be the nicest friendliest people you could meet and made the visit to the island special. They organized pot lucks every 2nd day or so with the approx 10 boats there. They took groups of us out fishing and coconut crab hunting, showed people how to make coconut pancakes and generally very helpful. We gave them most of the gasoline we had on board as the gov't didn't give them enough fuel to do anything with us cruisers.
We stayed a few days longer than planned to wait out some bad weather and finally said goodbye to every one that we had met there and headed out to sea for another 4 days to get to Pago Pago. This also turned out to be a rough passage with more reinforced trade winds and many squalls but was a fast sail. We slowed the boat down the last night so we would not arrive before daylight.

We arrived in Pago Pago American Samoa at 8am Sunday and the customs office is closed so we had to stay on the boat until Monday before we could go ashore. Which was fine as we were both tired and the boat needed a good clean up. We took the only remaining mooring ball at 14 16.342S   170 41.856 anchoring is fine too good depths. Harbor charges are the same weather on mooring ball or anchored.
We checked in Monday morning and it was a complex process as bad as Mexico almost. Walked around to 4 different offices (customs, health, agriculture quarantine, port captains office and finance office) all in same old building and no signs on doors so lots of stumbling around, and them finally to immigration a 15 min walk to another building. Well it was an adventure and we did not mind. Pago Pago is a working port so not a particularly interesting place and no marine stores here so can't spent money on the boat. But the provisioning for food is good with lots of brand names we are familiar with and prices are great. Good bus system if your ears can tolerate loud music often near the threshold of pain and your bum the hard wooden seats. A ride is only a dollar.  The harbor water seemed fairly clean for a working port, until we had a heavy rain one night.  The next morning the whole bay was covered in floating plastic bottles etc, brought down by the river feeding into harbor.
Dorothy was delighted with the Laundromat that was only a dollar a load, and is located at head of bay near bridge.  The Internet service is the best we have had since the states. $20 dollars for a week of unlimited Internet access. Ten time cheaper than French Poly and much faster. A few boats came in today that we know so it is always nice to talk to them and compare notes. We are slowly getting to know more and more boats as most boats are on the same route and time schedule to get to New Zealand or Australia before the cyclone season.