Well My players got the exact wrong impression during the second half of the bullywug gambit. Harliss Jarvell told the players that Vanthus jumped off the ship and swam away. They took this to mean that Vanthus would be coming back shortly with a crew of savage pirates to attack Sasserine.
How should I alleviate this?
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You first need to make it clear that savage creatures attack anything and everything, and there's no way they would take orders from someone.
Second, Harliss' tale should have made it clear that Vanthus resisted the pearl's effect and did not become savage, otherwise he would have stayed and gone on a rampage with the others.
What are the PC's doing, just hanging out in Sasserine, convinced he'll attack? The current pattern is that Vanthus runs when he's found out. He doesn't know the PC's are still alive at this point, so maybe he has no real reason yet to avoid Sasserine, but he shouldn't seem like the kind of NPC that could mount any kind of attack on Sasserine at all. Not yet, anyway.
There's no time line on when SWW has to be run. If they're waiting around in Sasserine have them wait. Describe it day by day until they are finally ready to sail off with Lavinia.
Just don't - if players do misunderstand stuff, their problem. Mine do all the time - the funniest things in campaigns usually result directly from their strange mental tangents they elope on without any discernible triggering event. Especially if they prove to be fallacious or utterly ridiculous.
And, as pointed out, there is no fixed timeframe for the bullywug attack in Sasserine.
Although the players should feel some pressure to go there since Harliss in all likelihood told them about the attack on Lavinia's manor.