We found the wind! I woke up this morning to the sound of the engine turning OFF. It was glorious. We threw the chute up with a swiftness commonly seen at the DMV or perhaps in a tree full of sloths. It actually took us about 15 minutes. It's been a months since we've flown it and Simon, Dad, and I were all a bit fuzzy on the routine-but at least we didn't raise it upside down like they do on Rockabye. At any rate, the spinnaker is flying happy and pulling us along at over 8kn. We've decided to pass on Ashmore reef and are making a bee line for Bali. There were fifteen different types of water snakes known to slither around the National Reserve and mom couldn't have been less keen. It was also at least 20 miles out of our way.

We've hooked two barracudas and are hoping for something of the edible category this afternoon. We've seen more traffic in the past two evenings. We went through a plethora of oil rigs a couple of nights ago and have been sighting container ships and cool Indo sailboats. The nights have been clear and everyone has been bathing in meteor showers during their watches except me. Perhaps I have the "intermission" watch. That's ok, though. I am just as thrilled to space out on the phosphorescence. At 1:30am the bright green underwater show is well underway with random twinkles in every direction. When we excite the surface with our hull the little buggers get really agitated causing much visual agreement.

A couple more days of this and we'll be on surfable shores and eating spicy vegetarian Indonesian delights for like 2$ and drinking beers for even less. Hooray!

Cheers to chute practice, Cass

Tom Williams.what do you mean by abbreviating to the 9th degree?