Position: 42 44.9407'N: 147 13.4760'W Distance covered in the last 24 hours: 167 miles Distance to Cape Flattery - 998 Conditions: 18 - 20 knots of wind out of the SW with gray skies and no chance of patches of blue.

Today's distance covered in the last 24 hours is the highest since leaving Hawaii and the distance to Cape Flattery just went under 1000 miles.

For the past 24 hours winds have ranged between 15 and 25 knots and a brief period last night where they were hitting 30 knots. Yesterday afternoon the sun came out and the wind and swell were aligned making for great sailing conditions. You could feel the boat surge down every swell hitting speeds in the high 9's and then slowing back down to 8 as the swell passed under us. I have sailed with some people that enjoy sailing as much in the rain and cold as they do in the warm sunshine. It seems to make no difference to them. For me everything seems so much more ominous when the sun goes away. Today's conditions are not that different from yesterday except that it has been raining nonstop and the cloud cover is very low. The blue water turns gray, the swells appear bigger and the wind is cold. It feels more like a storm and I find that I worry more and that I am tenser about the conditions. It does not look like the sun will make an appearance today but hopefully soon, even if just for a few hours.

I have not been fishing lately since my older sister Erica emailed me and told me to stop. Last time she told me to do something and I didn't she hit me over the head with a croquet mallet. We were younger then but it left quite an impression so ever since then I have tried to do what she said. I guess I have enough fish in the freezer anyway.

So far I have really enjoyed doing this trip solo. There have not been any moments where I felt like I couldn't do what I needed to. It does require that you think through everything you're going to do step by step and I find that I talk to myself a lot when I am doing a sail change or something that requires all my attention. Sleeping that is probably the strangest thing to get used to. I have an alarm that will alert me if the AIS system picks up a ship as well as radar alarms. I also have a timer that will wake me up every 30 minutes if I need it to. Despite all of these devices it is still very strange to go down below and crawl in bed knowing that there is no one on watch.

That's it for today.

Scott