Thursday morning after checking the weather (25kt south east winds and rain of the next 10 days) we decided to leave Wallis and sail to Fiji. It took 1and 3/4 hours to get back around the island to the main wharf and customs. By the time we had cleared customs and waited for the police to do their bit as immigration officers it was 11.00.

We hauled anchor and headed to the pass in the reef. Another hour long trip. We reached the pass it was 12.00 and low tide. This made it easy to get out of the atoll and into the deep blue ocean.
The first day as usual was good sailing making good time. By nightfall there were squalls on the horizon. These squalls dropped our speed down from 7.5kts to sometimes 3kts.

Daybreak and the squalls were still causing problems with winds gusting up to 30kts, pushing us slightly off course. This has continued all day. The south easterly winds haven’t appeared.
It’s now dusk and we have reefed down. We will see what the night brings.