Kingdom of Tonga

We headed for Tongatapu, the group of islands in the south of the Kingdom of Tonga. This was planned to be a simple stopover while waiting for a weather window. 

We didn’t want to go through all the customs formalities, so we preferred to hide and wait. 

But once again, Aeolus wasn’t in the mood to do us any favors, and we couldn’t head for New Caledonia… 

Instead we headed for the picturesque port of Nuku’Alofa via the north of the atoll. We weren’t surprised when we saw the whales. They had just arrived from the cold waters of Antarctica to give birth in the calm waters of the Tongan lagoons. 

Obviously, we made a detour to go and witness these queens of the oceans. The mainsail was down and the genoa half unfurled… 

At two knots there was only the sound of the ripple of the tiny waves and the deafening thump of the humpback whale’s flipper which shook the boat. 

I was excited by the possibility of filming this from above, so I launched the drone. The boat approached them carefully. 

I watched the spectacle on my phone which retransmits the images taken by the drone. I was totally captivated by the movements of the whales.  

Our boat finished up in the picture, finally capturing the image that my father had asked me to get. There’s another one for our album of animal photos!