We tore ourselves away from Tanna and set course for Port Vila in a SE breeze that was about 15 knots, and without too serious a swell. This continued pretty much until we reached the Western side of Erromango. The direction was absolutely from our stern, never the most comfortable point of sail, so we reefed in the main, set a reduced genoa on the pole and told the autopilot to be quiet and stop complaining (and yes, we know, you non-sailors are saying "these guys are never happy with the wind: it's either too strong, too weak, or they're bitching about the direction" And you are probably correct!! That's sailing, or more accurately that's sailors).
Our new trolling rod has proved a winner - two more fish on that afternoon: a middle-sized Yellowfin and a VERY large Skipjack that fought hard and made John work for the meat.
Erromango provides a lovely wind and swell shadow, which lulled us into a false sense of restfulness: a few miles north of the island and out of its protective embrace the swell really kicked in and we realised that the breeze had risen apace, while we had spent a good part of the night on uneventful watches. But we had Efate in sight and we rounded Pango Point about 08:00. By this time it was honking and just to keep us in our places, raining quite hard to boot. We passed through to the harbour proper, surrounded by a fleet of traditionally designed Polynesian boats that had been, we are told, been built in New Zealand and sailed across the Pacific from San Francisco. They had arrived the night before but did a staged "mass fleet entry" to Vila Harbour just as we came in. Very impressive - we are putting some pics of them in the gallery. Nonetheless the Vila Pilot boat seemed to regard us as an annoyance and potential scene-stealers, shooing us away with vigorous arm gestures.
Port Vila is superficially the same, but time and technology march on - there is now a 3G service in town and a couple of commercial WiFi services offering city-wide coverage. We are using one - slowish but good enough to Skype.
We came in between two other yachts on the seawall - including to port a Kiwi superyacht whose crew are waiting for the arrival of "The Owners". The crew are nice guys but I think they were a little concerned at the sight of a slightly unpredictably reversing 22 ton steel Adams bearing down on them!. Lots of fenders out.
Two boats down was a Japanese-flagged catamaran, "Umineko". The skipper is Motoyuki Sato, with three crew. Satosan is a lovely bloke - early retirement from Japanese corporate life allowed him to go to Hawaii and buy then fit out the cat, an ex-charter boat. He and the guys are sailing to Mackay in Queensland, then joining the Around the World fleet. Satosan asked us over for a meal on-board last night. It was pretty traditional Japanese stuff, including Yaki made on the BBQ in the manner of his hometown Hiroshima. - he calls them Japanese pizza which really undersells them - delicious!! Also there were members of the local Japanese expat community including a nurse educator Mitsuko who is spending a couple of years teaching at the Port Vila Hospital. We are going to go and visit her and the classes this week. They were all lovely and hospitable people and we had a great time eating, drinking Sapporo and feeling embarrassed at the fact that we were two and they were about ten, and yet we almost automatically expected that English would be the language of the dinner. They were very gracious. "Umineko" cast off this morning with predicted good weather for the journey to Australia. Here's hoping - they are terrific people and we count them as friends after only a couple of days.
Tonight we are cranking up the BBQ for pork spare ribs (courtesy of Craig Cook back home) and a glass or two of cheapish Cotes du Rhone left over from Noumea.
Tomorrow the shops are open and we will be getting some more antibiotics and topicals from the pharmacy, and awaiting the arrival of "Sea Fever" who stopped over in Erromango at Dillon's Bay.
Cheers from "Destiny" and crew!