Pangaimotu, Tongatapu, Tonga

Today finds us anchored off the tiny island of Pangaimotu which is in the southern part of Tonga about a mile from the capital city Nuka'lofa. The wharf in Nukalofa did not seem very appealing so we came here instead. We had an ecxellent sail down from the Hap'ai group of islands and the weather seems to have cleared for the time being. My fishing karma seems to have returned and we caught some very nice Mahi and Wahoo.
We did have some excitement in our last anchorage which was in the channel between the two Nomuka Islands. We anchored up in sand and coral patches in calm conditions. I dove on the anchor and it seemed to have set well. We went to sleep after setting the anchor alarm and were awakened at 0430H with a 180 wind shift and a squall with winds to more than 25 kts. The anchor alarm went off and before I could get oriented we were aground on coral. There were no lights ashore with sheets of rain and a lot of wind. My electronic charts were quite inaccurate and it was difficult to know which way to try to power off the reef in the dark.
We waited tensely for daylight and help from the crews of three other boats who were anchored about a mile away. We managed to kedge ourselves off with a large Danforth anchor set astern and tilting the boat with tension on a halyard on the main mast . Our friends, Brian and Brady from Delos (another Amel) were excellent in saving our boat from the reef.
In some ways, we were quite fortunate and subsequently diving on the boat showed no significant damage to the hull and rudder, just quite a bit of paint scraped off the keel and a few gel coat dings.
We are going into Nuka'lofa today by dinghy to do our check in and some shopping. Our days will be spent getting ready for our final leg to New Zealand and doing some sight seeing.
Photos to follow