Summary: noon to noon run was 119 miles. It was a combination of sailing last night and powering this morning.

Living in North Palm Beach for the last nine plus years has been great living but not so great for our sailing prowess. On this passage we have had to re-learn old lessons. One example occurred last night. There is an old sailing rule that if you are thinking about reefing (reducing the size of your sails) while you are out sailing you should do it. Well last night I remembered that rule and reefed the sails as soon as the thought crossed my mind. This paid off because the winds increased from 12 knots to 20 knots in about 30 minutes. The boat was moving well and in the right direction which was SSE. We still wanted to gain some easting so we took this opportunity to stay hard on the wind (beating again) to gain that valuable easting. It was quite rough with six plus foot swells and associated waves. Another lesson re-learned is that when beating never, I mean never, let your pants drop below your knees when going to the head. Having to bend over to try to pull them up with one had in sticky hot conditions may be impossible and dangerous if the boat rolls the wrong way. This hasn't happened to either one of us but yesterday I was reminded of the potential calamity while in the head. Remember the you have to maintain that tripod at all times and if you are sitting down and try to use both hands to pull up your pants you have lost your tripod position. Not good.

Last evening right before the sun set Pam saw whales flipping their tales in the air. This wasn't the normal raising of the tale as they dive they were sticking them straight up in the air and appeared to be beating the surface of the water with them. It was hard for us to see what was going on in their immediate vicinity because they were about five miles to our NW. This beating of the water went on for about ten minutes that we could see them. Very interesting, when we get internet access we're going to check out to see if there is an explanation for the behavior that we saw. That's it for now we seem to be making good progress - stay tuned.