Yes it it's true, after only twelve and a half days on the open ocean in the confines of a 40 foot boat (half of which is storage) we are half way there! Wow, you can feel the excitment in the air on the good ship Diamond Girl. While we are having so much funhere, I though i would take you down memory lane for are a few of those wonderful "are we there yet" moments: 1. He's touching me! "Billy I told you to stay on your side of the back seat." "But mom, there are three of us." 2. "Are you using the pillow?" (all trips have the one pillow rule) "I'm going to, you should have brought your own." "MOM!" 3. The ever popular "I have to go to the bathroom" "but we just stopped for lunch no one said they had to go. Hold it." "It's number two!" "Speed up Frank I see some trees comming up around the corner!" 4. And the grandady of them all, "You kidds be quite back there and read a book or something. If I hear one more word I am going to pull over and stop the car!" Oh yea, like that was going to happen. Dad had just passed truck that was going 40 on a two lane road posted 55MPH We had been behind that truck for 30 miles. Do you really think he is now going to "stop the car" because of "one more word" from the back seat? Then again, if he did stop the car it would probably be the last word ever heard from the back seat. As to life on Diamond Girl, there has recently been a fair amount of complaining from one of the crew. If I have heard "I'm hot!" once I've heard it a hundred times. I do remember some science teacher saying that it was hotter at the equator because the sun is closer to the earth but he sure didn't say the it was going to be the same temperature as the surface of the sun! All and all things are well abourd. For the time being we have escaped the dreaded ITCZ. We have no wind but the fuel is holding up nicely and the sea is so smooth you want to break out the water skis. "Nelda where did we pack the water skis? What do you mean you didn't bring them."