Vanuatu is just disappearing over the horizon and the sun is setting in the west, as it should. Already I've had my challenges. After an hour of motoring to windward I decided that that's just not morally correct so I decided to raise sails. The main went up just fine and I let go the headsail furler. It promptly jammed up with the sail half way out and there was no way it was going in or out. Some water was coming over the bow so it wasn't very desirable to go forward and sort it out. Turns out it was worse than I thought and to fix it I had to lower the headsail, after cutting the furled line, re thread and re roll the furled drum and then put the headsail back up again. Now with crew it's a job but not too hard. On your own it meant a dozen trips to the bow and back which was a little obnoxious but fact is it had to be done or I could have got into trouble later with no ability to furl the headsail. It also made me feel good to conquer yet another problem.
On the way out of Port Vila, passing jet skis and tourist boats and seeing swimmers on shore, I passed several very relaxed looking and quite large sharks of the black tip fin variety. It made me feel uncomfortable for the tourists but apparently they are common and don't seem to eat people often.
I've settled down to a very pleasant sail to windward, I'm about ten degrees north of the course I'd like as the wind has a lot of east in it but I hope to make that up later and pass Recife Petrie tomorrow sometime just before we get to the grand passage, sounds grand don't it.
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