Misto - July 17-22: Goodbye Vanuatu and halfway to Australia.

The last couple of days in Port Vila were filled with the usual pre-departure activities and by trying to put faces and names to our new WARC friends. The dinner and prize giving certainly helped with this and we revelled in being part of the camaraderie of a rally again.

The start was in a lively 16+ knots of wind and we had a good beginning to our journey. The winds have been great so far on this leg, blowing consistently 12-20 knots from the ESE and SE, which is making for a fast passage. We have had our full suite of sails out, utilizing the parasailor, gennaker and the white sails to try and take best advantage of the beautiful sailing conditions. If the choppy swells would abate it would be a sailor's dream and absolutely perfect. For most of the night we have some moon which makes the night sailing really enjoyable.

This evening during roll call we hooked a fish. Abandoning the SSB radio for the rod and helm we endeavored to bring it in. We think we fist snagged a mahi mahi, but it then got taken by a huge sail fish, which jumped and splashed spectacularly on the surface and then dove taking much of our line with it. We managed to retrieve about half of the line but it proved too much for us and we lost our lure and the other half our line. Ros has banned fishing for the moment - at least we have fish in the freezer from our catch going into Port Vila.

We are now past the half way mark. We have around 440 nm to go to the entrance to Hydrographer's passage through the Great Barrier Reef and then about another 120 nm to Mackay.
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At 7/22/2018 1:34 AM (utc) our position was 18°17.81'S 159°40.58'E
Our course and speed are 260T at 7kts