The last 24 hours has been a bit slow with the wind just too strong for the spinnaker and just not strong enough for the jib. This means that we will only make our waypoint off the Brazilian coast sometime during the night tonight.

In the mean time the shipping around us has increased dramatically with Shaheda spotting the first one yesterday evening. Since then Terry has another and Shaun has two, leaving yours faithfully with nil to his name. But, there are many miles to go and many ships still to be spotted.

Dave on the 46' in front of us has been flying up the coast of South America with the aid of the current and has crossed the equator already and is at present 800 nautical miles ahead of us. I spoke to Richard on the 46' behind us this morning. He has been trying to catch up to us but his efforts have resulted in his spinnaker blowing this morning and now, with the loss of that sail, he should start falling back again. He was just over 400 nautical miles behind us this morning. Gavin, on the 43' is way back now and going very slowly as he chose a course a bit too far south.

As I type this we have another large pod of dolphin playing around the boat with Shaun and Terry keeping them amused by leaning over the boat railing and trying to convince them to jump out the water. Not much luck doing that!

Shaheda baked two small lemon cakes this morning, of which one "evaporated" whilst still hot, together with a cup of coffee. Darn good it was. I doubt that the other one will last the day or, to put it another way, we had better eat it or else it may just go stale - and we do not want that to happen!

Today is radio sked day for the hams back home - catch you on 14 237.5 at 16:00 Zulu and then again on Wednesday on the same frequency and time.

Cheers for now - regards from the motley bunch aboard Moorings 46#A1040.