The breeze is up, 20 - 25 knots with correspondingly larger seas. It was a very rough night and sleep is in short supply. We still have just the jib up and yesterday was another 140 mile day, without touching a thing.

We report into the Single Side Band radio "Puddle Jump" net every morning to keep track of the all the boats sailing from Mexico, Panama, Ecuador etc to the South Pacific. (Puddle Jump is the silly name coined by the editors of Latitude 38, a west coast sailing magazine, for the group crossing the Pacific.) There are about 20 boats that check in regularly with their progress, weather etc. It is great hearing friends' voices in the morning and makes the very large ocean seem a little less empty. The boats that left first have started to cross the equator and we are excited to hear them reporting positions from the southern hemisphere. Boats ahead of us are also seeing the very light winds of the doldrums typically found near the equator. We are torn between a very heart felt desire for calmer conditions and the fear that we will be running out of wind in the next couple of days and will probably think longingly of the steady breezes we have had to date.