SURVIVING ATA
Ata Island was the first landfall I ever made as a sailor. It is an uninhabited speck of rock that juts out of the ocean like a tooth. It is also the southernmost island of the Tongan group and it loomed out of the dawn of our seventh day at sea from New Zealand. Even now it still seems like a miracle that you can conjure an island out of the sea. We spent a few hours anchored in the island’s lee and I distinctly remember its vertical peaks had a foreboding presence, but little did I know then of its dark and quirky history.
At each island we visited further north I had a habit of going ashore as a break from with no family and insist I visit their village where I would be overfed and become an excellent source of entertainment for their grinning kids. It was with those three words I got my first glimpse of the Tongan way and as it turns out, the key to one of the great survival stories of our time.
