It is day 7 of Let's Go!'s third passage to the Marquesas of French Polynesia and my fourth including Patty's and my voyage on Sea Lark from California to New Zealand in 1981. We left from Santa Cruz Island, Channel Islands, California in strong winds and this helped us to transit the "Horse Latitudes" fairly quickly. In fact, we have covered 1000 NM of our 2850 NM passage averaging 142 NM per day. Not record beating but pretty fair considering the lack of wind that plagued us a couple of days after leaving California. The boat has behaved very well with few issues thus far. We on board have had few issues either, other than settling into the motion. My crew is John Quilliam of Shetland, on his seventh major passage on Let's Go! since he first braved the Gulf of Yemen and Somali pirates back in 2008. It is terrific having John back since in addition to being a very able seaman, he is an excellent cook and makes shipboard life comfortable and enjoyable. This is the first blog transmission from the boat and to be honest, I have no idea if it will work. The bird photo is of a Tropic Bird (known as a Bosun Bird among seafarers because it marlin spike) tail. I have tried to upload a small photo but this one may be ridiculously small. The sighting of a Tropic Bird is considered, at least by me, as a good omen since her arrival always coincides with the arrival of the trade winds along with the shirts off weather of the tropics. If anything comes through at all, I would be grateful if someone would let us know at letsgo@uuplus.net. This will be my last passage through the South Pacific, at least on my own boat so I will try to make the most of it. Our first landfall will the island of Nuku Hiva. From there we will visit the Tuamotus, Society Islands, Cook Islands and Tonga before heading south west to Minerva Reef and New Zealand in early October