Trip Log: 3385 nautical miles. 258 nautical miles to go.

Just a few sailfish today, but one was quite large.

Apart from some onions, potatoes and garlic, there's no fresh food remaining. Meals are now various forms of pasta with sauces, rice dishes, and freeze dried or canned vegetables. We also have cans of fruit, beans, and the like. Scurvy probably won't set in just yet.

We've now had the spinnaker up for over 48 hours. The most recent 24 hour run was 176 miles, a new record (by 1 --- we've had two days of 175 miles). This spinnaker driving is making us quite tired.

We managed to contact our friends on Galivant this afternoon. The Pacific Passage Net, at 2300 UTC, was something of a bun fight this afternoon. The propagation was quite poor, and net control was in Panama City. The boats near us couldn't be heard. Our radio performs better than almost any other because we are a steel boat, so we could hear the net going on but the boats around us couldn't and several kept trying to check in, talking over the main thread. One guy in particular, on a boat called Nae Hassle (and yes, he has a thick scottish accent) just kept saying his boat name over and over in his attempts to be recognized. Galivant tried to check in, couldn't be heard, so then called us. I replied, and our microphone worked (mostly), but of course my conversation blasted over the main net conversation. I managed to switch Galivant to another frequency reasonably quickly and we caught up with them. They've done this passage before. They said that they were having problems with this point of sail, and that it was taking a real toll on their gear so they were now moving quite slowly. They have a ripped main. They were ahead of us two days ago, were 33 miles away and slightly behind yesterday and are now 70 miles directly astern. I explained to them that the reason we are traveling quite a bit faster is that we have no autopilot so we're making sure that we're moving as fast as we can at all times---hence the spinnaker.

The winds have been a little lighter still. In the early morning, they dropped as low as 5 knots. Right now, they're 12-15 knots and we're running at 7.5 knots.

For several days, we've had the feeling we were nearly there, and have had to remind ourselves that the remaining distance was more than our longest previous passage!

An interesting point is that, since we've entered the trades proper, every day's run has been greater than any run we've ever done before that.

The water is a beautiful blue during the day. The clouds have been relatively few, and mostly the puffy little popcorn ones. The nights are full of stars and the milky way. We can clearly see both the big dipper and the southern cross at the same time.