We have had a wonderful 5 days at sea. We have done 500 miles up till now and have charged the batteries and therefore running the motors for only about 4 hours and that was even longer than necessary, but we used the time to watch some dvd's as well! We are sailing well and keeping up with the other boats, if you can remember me worrying about us being too slow, too heavy or whatever during our difficult trip from Panama to Galapagos. A "Kon-tiki raft" Prrrfection is definitely not - we are sailing comfortably at up to 7knots with the wind on our aft quarter (SE).

A frontal system has just passed over us, we have had stronger winds the last 2 days 15-20k, but as from about 1am this morning the wind died down and it is now only 6-8k...

We have caught only a tuna so far, we do not feel like too much fish yet, but the other boats have had lovely catches, mostly Dorado.

The girls are doing school lessons every day and also doing hand-crafts as well...amazing how they keep themselves busy. When we run the motors they often tend to just watch videos, but on this trip, running the engines is something special (to conserve our diesel) and it forces them to keep themselves busy with other things.

The sea is generally calm, The last 2 days (with the stronger wind) it was a bit more lumpy, but it is still a 100 times better than the previous passage we made to Galapagos. The night skies are unbelievably clear. We have not seen so many stars in a long time, maybe the last time was during our Atlantic Ocean crossing! The moon is growing smaller now and it is quite dark before it comes up, so the skies are just magnificent.

Last night we had a chance encounter with another boat in the middle of the ocean. "Dolittle" is a New Zeeland yacht that left a day after us and the morning before, when we checked in with all the other yachts on our radio net, I noticed that their position was closer to us. At 2am last night, just when I came on watch, we saw their navigational lights (the red, port light) appear on the horizon, we were running without navigational lights to conserve battery power. I switched the vhf-radio and our lights on and called them. They did not reply and the guy on watch only saw us when they were about 1-2 miles away...naughty, naughty! We had a brief chat on the radio and then they slowly disappeared over the horizon on their course. They are a monohull and sail a bit different than a catamaran, at that stage we only had our genoa out and we were going slower than them. Haha-hah, we actually have little races out here...we carefully track each other's positions and progress and try to better our own....well, I do anyway, Claude pretends not to care - but he is quick to fine-trim the sails to get a faster sail! We are more than 20 yachts (that I am aware off) doing the crossing in a close radius of about 1000 miles.But one never sees the others, the ocean is really big and we were just lucky to meet that yacht in the middle of the ocean.

Today Claude also planted some seedlings. We bought some plastic containers whilst in Panama and as a little project are going to try and grow some herbs and veggies - hydroponics - out here! The girls made little tags to identify the seedlings and we have spring onions, lettuce, cherry tomatoes and cauliflower (nogal!) going in 2 containers and some herbs going in the other. Will let you know if he has green fingers!

So, this is just to let you know that all is well onboard and that PRRRFECTION is sailing happily towards the sun once more! Now we only have to receive some news from you!

Love,
Ronel, Claude, Mariska and Rochelle...and the pets onboard.

PS. Talking about the pets, they are enjoying the passage as well. "Amigo" loves having company in the cockpit everyday and every night and "Mitzi" patrols the decks, hunting for squid and flying fish...still have to get her to eat it, though!