surprise cyclone...

The surprise cyclone hit Vava'u on the 7th. It was a low pressure system over Fiji when we went to bed, with a low expectation of becoming a cyclone at all, but at 6am we were clobbered by a category 1 that was packing a punch. We think it had somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 knots sustained, but a fisherman friend of ours claims he saw a gust of 90 knots on his ananometer. Anyway, here's a pic of a wall of rain coming at us around 8am. Normally you'd see the main island and Mt. Talau there where we only see rain. The other pic is of the waves hitting the beach during that wave of rain. It was unexpected so we could have been better prepared... all on the island was well, but we had some damage to all of our boats and dinghies. It can all be repaired, but might prove an expensive fix and a set back in time we would have otherwise spent building. We lost internet for about a week as the aerial was damaged in the storm. Other than that, we're fine; we have an expanded view of the sea now that the trees have all been pruned by the storm and we are back to building again, now with a crew of 3: Soa, Tevita and Una. Yesterday another cyclone hit Tongatapu, but didn't give us up here in Vava'u much trouble. Cyclones be gone!