well getting back together prior to happy hour turned out to be quite the challenge. the wind and swell had come up and i decided without drastic action on my part eagle 9 was not going to catch up in time for happy hour (or ever). after 1.5 hour of bobbing eagle 9 seemed to have stagnated off my stern and i was getting sea sick and a bit grumpy. we had a few words back and forth and decided in spite of everything everyone really did want to stay together. eagle 9 bet a case of tiger beer they could catch us in 45 minutes with us both just sailing (we where doing 6.5 kts at this point). it looked like they where close to winning but confessed they had had to fire up the motor. who needs the americas cup when you can race for something far more valuable in the middle of the arabian sea!

at 1700 we broadcast the happy hour bell over vhf and got down to business. we where all basically in information, what a concept! it did take through sunset to get us all at a similar speed with us reefed pretty far down. for a while it looked like eagle 9 was going to take off with their new genoa they where doing 7+ kts surfing down waves. in the end we settled in at around 6.5. by this point we had 20kts of wind and it was too rough for taco night so we had to revert to frozen pasta back, yum yum!

and we did make ssb contact with another group of boats close to our position, they had been overflown by the P3 and helo's so things are definatly going on out here. they also mentioned they had lost sight and vhf contact with one of their boats. guess we are better than we think!

its 2am here, need to poke my head up and see if everyone is still in position, almost afraid to look .... we are just passing a north south shipping lane and have a long range contact 22nm north of us.

oh and the pirate situation, still no pirates on board!

cheers, roger