Welcome to day 7, yea I only knew that because I cheated and looked at yesterday's blog entry. Some time with out a date on your watch things seem to evolve around food and wake up calls to go on deck. We had been listening to I pods but went back to Margaritaville on Sirius radio. Yea we were surprised that it works out in the middle of the Pacific.

Yesterday was Mexican day we had brisket fajitas wrapped in a tortilla. It seems we have tortillas a bunch. Guess they are flat and do not take up much room and can do a bunch of things with them. Our afternoon snack was homemade banana nut bread and a glass of ice cold milk. Dinner was chicken enchiladas with salsa Verde and fresh Pico de gallo, you can not complain about the food on board.

Back to racing, guess what? We are on starboard tack with the � A kite. The most exciting thing last night was the 10 PM to 2 AM watch the wind picked up to 25 knots and with the � A kite up it was exciting, while Jim was driving he managed to send two waves into the cockpit for the first water on board that far back. I asked Steve if our sail maker Terry Flynn had given him limits on what wind speeds we could use the � A sail and he said "no but I guess we will find out" which reminded me of another story about a sail maker and his customer. We will tell that one at the dock.

We had set a theoretical way point some time ago at 24N and 135W and we reached that point at 7:30 this morning. Guess it is good to have goals. Our strategy has changed a bit in the last 24 hours. I kept talking about sagging down to cross in front of the competition. We are now mostly headed straight to Hawaii and will wait for the predicted wind shift to the east to jibe first and use the shift to get to them. We have 100 miles of leverage so it will not take much of a shift. So I predict that I will be writing about our first jibe in the Saturday blog. We are currently sailing a TWA of 150 degrees with an AWA of 110. as the wind shifts to the east we will consider changing chutes to the new secret chute and we need to sail deeper to head for Hawaii.

In the speed department Will is the king of the hill at 15.9 with Steve and Jim are at 15.8. No more staysail it became two pieces during the broach yesterday morning. Decision was made not to repair it due to the limited sticky back we have on board and we may need to patch up a chute later in the trip.

At 1PM Tuesday we have been racing for 120 hours and have sailed 1008 nm. For those who need to know that is 8.3 knot average. At 1 PM we still had 1420 nm to go and we have picked up the pace and we are averaging 10+knots for the last 20 hours. Looks like a Monday finish for us.

We did see another boat at noon and caught them by 2PM and they were out sight by 5PM. Do not get too excited it was Far Niente a Catalina 42. They were in the first start 4 days ahead of us and as of the Tuesday morning role call were in 43rd so no gain in fleet for us.

Received the news from the roll call some good some bad. We are now 3 in class and 30 th in fleet an improvement of one place each. Bad news is that the Horizon gained 6 miles and Allure gained 4 miles on us, they are 83 and 40 miles south respectively. We did put it to the Mighty Tongaroa gaining 17 miles on them, they are 23 miles north of us. Seeing how we owe everyone in our class time we need to speed up a bunch. It is looking like the south is winning.

Sea life has been hard to find we have seen a couple of pods of porpoise feeding and the last couple of days the flying fish have started showing up. That is about all this time.

Life on board is becoming more routine and sleep is becoming easy in the tossing hull with the engine running to charge the batteries, make water and keep the refer cold.

Last night was the full moon and the skies were still overcast so we did not get a look at the moon. It did provide enough light to see the sails. You know it is pretty out here in the wide open Pacific. The other thing that happens as you head west is you change time zones every 15 degrees. This changes when the sun rises and sets. Not bad except you keep your watches on PDT till you get to Hawaii. So the sun rises later each day and sets latter each evening. The 6PM to 10 PM watch now is all during the day.

Later, signing off from the SV Passion located at 23.56N and 136.03W only 1221miles from Hawaii (getting closer every day)