In the last 24 hours we've covered 187 miles! A new Fly Aweigh record, surpassing yesterday's record-breaking mileage; flying away on perfect trade winds toward the Tuamotu Archipelago.

I, for one, am getting very excited because ever since I was little and saw the book "Gulag Archipelago" laying around on a coffee table I have wondered what in the world an archipelago really is. Soon enough, I'll know. But in the meantime, the image of sunken soufflés remains, little puddles of aqua ocean surrounded by tiny piles of white sand and palm trees.

We're in the company of a few other boats we know of -- Paikea Mist is about 30 miles ahead of us, and a boat called Boree is 5 miles ahead, we spotted them through the binoculars and had a short chat on the radio. Serenity arrived yesterday. Don't know who else is planning to arrive in Kauehi tomorrow morning, but this is something I'm realizing: we're going to be with other boats for most of this trip. I think I imagined things being a bit more isolated out here, but the reality is, over 200 boats crossed from the West Coast of the Americas in the last 6 weeks, and many more came from the East coast and Europe through the Panama Canal. This is sailing season in the South Pacific, and I don't know what in the world ever led me to believe we'd have solitude out here. It's rather comforting, though. And I love the people we're meeting. A very international crowd.

It's interesting to peruse the bookshelves in cruiser lounges here and there along the way, those book-swap shelves where tattered and moldy paperbacks are left and traded for something different. In Mexico, they were almost exclusively in English, many of them familiar to me. Now it's a much more eclectic and intellectual mix, with books in Dutch, German, French, English, and sometimes something else. People are congregating out here in the "middle of nowhere" from all over the world.

As far as crew morale goes, we're all a lot more acclimated today to the movement of this boat on the ocean, a combination that sometimes feels like oil and water but today is much more symbiotic. It helps that we got a bit more sleep last night, not to mention all those naps yesterday.

Our food goal at the moment is to tackle the bananas. Cooking bananas, eating bananas, all ripe. Yesterday Allan and I were bitten by a spider that Greg eventually found and smooshed, we think it crawled from between the bananas we got on the last day. I hadn't had a chance to wash them yet -- and had them in the cockpit awaiting a quick salt bath but the little bugger got out and invisibly attacked. My biggest fear is that it's a she and she has laid eggs in some dark corner, and a whole lot of little Charlotte's will soon hatch. Although I have a fairly broad "no squish" bug policy, preferring the capture and release approach whenever possible, we have issued an all-out ship-wide General Order Number One to squish any spiders found aboard.

Activities today seem to be focusing on computer work, with no less than 3 laptops humming away up here in the noontime cockpit. Lunch is imminent, looking forward to cucumber and tomato salad with rice and quinoa along with the ever-present baguette, which we have to eat soon or they'll be giant stale croutons.

Next blurb entry will be from the Archipelago!