Friday 28th September

At Sea

18 40.552 S
177 04.487 E (at midnight)

Happy Birthday Mum, we are thinking about you as we make our way to Noumea.
Happy 25th birthday Daniel, hope it's a good one

As soon as it was a decent hour to go ashore Gerry dinked in and caught a taxi to the port authority (he was probably banging on the door waiting for them to open). I began the tidy away and lock stuff down process ready to leave as soon as possible. Gerry was a surprisingly short time and was back in time for some breakfast and to help with the last of the stowing gear away. The dinghy was hauled up onto the deck and tied down and the life jackets and headsets donned- we were ready to leave. Hauling up the anchor took a while, it was firmly entrenched but it did come up eventually and we began to motor out of the harbour at 10 15hrs. Once we were clear of the anchored boats we turned into wind and hoisted the main sail with the first reef in place, then turning back on course we unfurled the jib half way, the wind was blowing at about 17 knots as we cleared the harbour and switched the engine off- it was nice sailing to begin our trip. The sky however was grey and overcast, we were prepared for rain at any moment, happily it didn't eventuate and we sailed all day without any real problems. I felt a little wobbly at first- nothing too bad but enough to make me stay on deck and not want to venture below very much. We crept out between the Fiji islands; dodging the reefs and had cleared the very last island by 19.00hrs. We ate dinner and began the night watches. The entire night was good as far as sailing went, the wind picked up to 19-25 knots but the swell remained pretty constant at around 6 feet, we roared along doing between 7 and 9 knots all night. It was a good start to our trip.