Things have settled down a lot, with the wind staying steady, and indeed backing to the north quite a bit. Pretty good sailing, overall, though a little slow now. But the conditions mean we spend a lot of time in the cockpit. David and I were up there yesterday afternoon, chatting about something or other, and got to see a very impressive sight: a whale breaching twice. It was far enough away that we could only estimate how big it was from a sense of its hang-time in the air, but from that we guessed it to be a minke whale. Not a real big whale, 20-30 feet long. The book says they like to breach, and often "almost fully". This one must have been an athlete, since it cleared the surface by almost its body length. And landed with a mighty splash. It looks like fun. Just like the Polynesian boys - all mammals like to do the cannonball.

The other sighting was a couple of hours later, and less interesting. A big container ship came by a few miles away, probably bound for Honolulu from Seattle or Vancouver. It's the 4th boat we have seen since we cleared Hawaii - two fishing boats and two freighters. A pretty busy piece of ocean, it would seem. We keep a good watch, so it's not a safety concern. Just another sign we're getting back to civilization. Kind of sad, really, we like our oceans to ourselves. But that ain't happening here.