The hot news of the day is that Ben lost his other top front tooth!!! So now he has a toothless smile!!!! Adorable. He is worried that the tooth fairy won't come. He is not concerned she won't make the trip out here to the middle of the Pacific, his trepidation is either O or I are always awake doing watches and he worries she won't want to be seen! O assured him she has the ability to make herself invisible, but he doesn't think Ben bought into that idea. We have decided to leave the forward hatch open above his bed and see what happens. (hopefully the seas stay settled or he will be really surprised, not so much by the tooth fairy, but the torrents of salt water that will come pouring in on him!)
We are officially one third of the way there. Five days, one thousand miles..not bad.
Yesterday was a nice day. O had the dog watch, 5:30 am the wind died and as a result, the seas were the calmest they have been since the trip began. I was able to scrub bathrooms, vacuum, the kids took baths, O caught a mahi mahi which we ate for lunch and we had a festive craft session.
Granted, we were not getting the speeds we had been before, but it was a nice reprieve. We flew the spinnaker most of the day which gently pushed us along at a nice eight kt clip. I swear the spinnaker is like that nursery rhyme about the little girl that had a little curl....when it is good it is very, very good and when it is bad it is horrid!!!The sail can be great, but it can also be a bear to get down or put up. I had visions of torching it for a while yesterday and then once it was up and set...I had thought it was the best invention ever.
Last night around sunset, the winds picked up again and we were off! We hauled, averaging around ten kts, which helped make up for the slack in the winds during the day. O was happy because we finished just four miles shy of another two hundred mile day. It was a good day.
Let's see...Oh yeah, yesterday afternoon O caught a 60 lb blue marlin, which I had never seen before. What a beautiful fish!!! They are narrower than I thought, and the hues of blue are stunning, the high dorsal fin running down her back made her look majestic, like the King/Queen of the sea. While O was holding her by the leader and pulling her onboard, she spit the lure and was off. We had no plans on keeping her anyway, as they are not that good eating, so she did us a favor. We were all in awe of her beauty. Wow.
Today it was lumpy, not too bad but just enough to throw you off a bit. As I write this we have 8/9kts of wind out of the SE and an 8ft swell. All is well. According to our grib files we should pick up some wind in fifty miles or so.
I had the dog watch last night and made the mistake of watching Rachel Getting Married...great film but heavy and depressing...
The kids are well. Ben did school this morning, while Sammy practiced his alphabet to Sesame Street. They have been playing Legos and Lincoln logs, building forts in the main salon, helping their Dad clean fish and fighting with each other..in no particular order.
Today's fish report: One mahi mahi and one wahoo...glad we went back for the rod & reel.