Everything went as planned yesterday, and we had a great trip through the passage between the reefs. We were in the lee of the reef, so the waves were minimal, and we made great time. We exited the other side around midday and carried on through Fiji waters.
There is a large swell running from the south, and the surfers in Fiji must be loving it. It's gentle enough, and the space between the waves is so large that it's not really noticeable to us unless you look out of the saloon window and suddenly see just how big the swells are. The wind died down as we approached the reef yesterday to around 16knts and during the night at times was dropping below our threshold of 10knts apparent and it was great (and much safer!) to start the engine by pushing a button rather than twisting some wires together or getting a screwdriver depending on which engine we wanted to start.
We have around 125 nm until we clear the islands of Fiji, with a few obstacles in front of us to navigate around.
So we have an obstacle that is already 3 nm across, potentially 2 nm away from where it's shown on the chart, and we need to give it a wide berth because we really don't want to find out which direction the "2 miles" was in. Suddenly, that seemingly huge 5-mile-wide passage doesn't look quite so huge.
And by this afternoon it's less than 500 nm to Port Vila, which is very exciting because after we get to Vila that means it's only 1,000 nm to Mackay, and we can smash that out in six or seven days!