Hello to all,

This is the wipeout king mast monkey polar bear keel hauler, William Richard Liles, come to give you a different punta de vista on this crazy ride we all voluntarily signed up for. There will be no weather information, sail changes, or otherwise unintelligible sailing talk for all the non sailors to snooze through here. What you will find instead is pure pacific adventuring synthesized and percolated as strong as the jet fuel that keeps us going in the middle of the night.

The only way to describe what we are doing right now is being a twelve year old riding down the biggest hill in the neighborhood and dropping into it on your speediest bicycle without an breaks. Its really fast and really fun but your knuckles are white and there are more than a few explicative laden moments. On top of that every other kid in the neighborhood is doing the same trying to get to the bottom of the hill where there's a big pot of candy (or in this case hula girls, duh) so instead of any incentive to use brakes (had there been any) you grease up the wheels, put your best cards in the spokes, clip in so you don't go flying into the night, and hold on for one wild ride. As if that wasn't enough your best friend is sitting on the handle bars holding his enormous pet dog on a leash who's pulling you faster but could at any moment send you straight into the pavement. Are you beginning to get what this is like?

Far and away the best part of the whole gig though is the people doing it with you, your best friend on the handlebars. You're with these people all day every day and know more about their daily habits than you would ever want to and have heard all their best jokes seven times. Everybody is sleep deprived, last night I looked at my watch and it said three thirty and I got confused and thought what on earth would I be doing up at three thirty my watch must be wrong. and then I remembered that it definitely is three thirty and there's still two and a half hours before I can crawl back to bed. At four in the morning when your all hopped up on coffee everything seems hilarious. Some of it is, some isn't, some is quickly forgotten and the very best gets repeated so often that everybody's laughing before half of the joke is said. The boat stinks, everybody stinks, you can take three showers and you'll still stink, you'll just smell like flowery soapy stink. Every now and then you g et a whiff of something rank and you smell yourself and you don't know if its you or the person next to you but it doesn't matter til you get to Hawaii anyway because it will take several showers to feel human again. To still function with all the sleep deprivation and hard work we need fuel and we are no where near starving.seriously who eats enormous ribeyes in the middle of the pacific while racing besides those crazy boys (and girl) from tejas?

But who am I kidding? This thing is a cakewalk. we're being escorted by humpback whales all the way to Hawaii, sailing under picture perfect rainbows and pulling into floating motels every evening to watch the sunset from the comfort of a hammock on the balcony and the only complaint is when the continental breakfast runs out of your favorite type of bagel before you can get there. We are doing this for fun right?

Have to go now, time for the unofficial mast monkey to make sure all is well at the top of the treehouse. Ooh ooh Ahh Ahh

Will