The fleet left Turtle Bay yesterday morning under calm winds and clear skies. We put up our large "Hot Lips" spinnaker and was followed by the paparazzi aboard Profligate, the Latitude 38 catamaran. Who knows, maybe Sirocco's pic will appear in the next issue? Richard Spindler, the Grand Poohbah, awarded us a pizza for the cool spinnaker.

The winds remained calm so the Grand Poohbah allowed everyone to use engines for the first 6 hours. We were able to sail most of the time and only motored 1 hour. We kept pace with a McGregor 65 for about 5 hours and then finally passed them. Later in the afternoon we changed to the red spinnaker and kept it up partly through the night and had a wild ride. The seas and wind (20-25) were so big I could barely handle the wheel. The wind held through the night at 25 knots so we just sailed under the mainsail. Matt had a big surprise when driving. A squid attacked him.

This morning the wind is still up and we have confused seas. Very uncomfortable. We can barely walk around the boat. We're hoping the seas calm down later on.

We should arrive in Bahia Santa Maria tonight. Still no luck with the fishing.





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