Starry Nights, Sunny Days Captains Log 03*23'S 136* 23'W ; Sat. Oct.12, 2013 270 miles to the Equator Brilliant orange sunsets against the royal blue sea Flying fish skittering across the water in clouds Brilliant phosphorescence behind the boat at night Sea birds flying the canyons between waves The sound of sloshing waves going by the hull Yes, we're cruising Now the 4th day on a starboard tack, with one leg gradually getting a bit longer, we are settling into cruising mode. We are both recovered from Mal de Mar; yeaaaa, no Stugeron today. Course it helps that the seas have settled also. The breeze seems to be gradually decreasing; we are down to 10-13 ESE, with no reef in any sails. We are still doing about 4.5 knots through the water, but we entered the S Equatorial current a day and a half ago, which slowed down our speed over the ground (sog). It goes from E to W and since we are crossing it going at an upstream angle, it cost us maybe ¾ knot. We may be just breaking free of it now. It looks like another 3 days to the equator, then above, where we hope the breeze becomes more from the S and we can use the N Equatorial current which flows E to help us with our easting. If you are interested in the weather we're having, you may be able to access the South Pacific Weather Briefing package from NOAA. Try searching for it directly or finding it on the huge confusing NOAA site. Of course we can't access that here, but we get daily weatherfax wind-wave predictions for the E Pacific from the Honolulu weather station. We also mark our position daily on a large chart of the E Pacific. Seems like we are making about 100 miles a day or so, so far. Now that we have our health back we are enjoying our morning coffee much more and all the delicious meals Gloria prepared in advance of our trip. And with our power situation improved greatly, we have turned the freezer down. We could probably eat our way around the world with the stores on board! For the first time on this trip we have a fishing line out; hoping for a yellowfin or bigeye tuna and shasimi. In addition to reading, watching movies or westwing on the video viewer, we have dug out our Spanish books and are starting to review, relearn, and get better at this. We are using "Spanish for Cruisers" which has a lot of helpful phrases without getting lost in verb conjugation. It still seems like our brains are pretty well ossified though. Gloria is making toasted cheese sandwiches, time to send this off and enjoy lunch on the veranda.