What a difference a day makes! Pleasant sailing all day today. The wind and waves subsided, and nary a squall was to be seen in the brilliant blue sky over the brilliant blue sea.

I shook out the reef at the start of my watch, and though we have been making slow progress against the wind in light airs, it doesn't matter, it's just a nice day to be on the water on a sailboat gurgling along in the sunshine. I like sailing. That's why I am here. Imagine a nice summer afternoon on the Hudson River or the Long Island Sound with just enough wind to fill your sails and no chop to stop you, that was today in this part of the South Pacific.

With no hope of anchoring before dark, we don't need to make it to Faihava Passage on Vava'u until 0800 in the morning. That still leaves plenty of time to get to the customs dock when they open in the morning.

Met Bob's midday email said “you can keep tacking into the wind, but you will have to turn on your motor to complete this passage eventually.” Actually, we hadn't tacked yet by mid-day, we just followed the starboard tack wind shift, which had us headed to the reefs south of Vava'u instead of the safe water on the north side.. We made our first tack at 1445 to keep well of the reefs, though the port tack did not point us anywhere near our waypoint. I took the comment about motoring as a challenge.

At 1600 tea time, we talked about tacking back. Robin said she had given up on seeing landfall before sunset. Then she shouted “wait- there it is - land Ho!” At first I didn't believe her, since we were both sitting on the low side of the boat where you can't usually see the horizon. But Robin had caught a glimpse at the top of a wave, and, sure enough, the distinct line of Tongan hills rose in a thin strip of haze blue on the horizon.

Since then, the Tongan hills have grown to cliffs, now visible in the moonlight as we approach the north end of Vava'u, ghosting along on the gentle puffs of night wind that don't show up in the weather models. Oh, and based on our radar, it looks like the electronic charts are off by half a mile