Well, we crossed the equator at 4:19 AM (MST) this morning (3/24/2011) at 00 00'.00 S Lat and 131 45'. 280 W LON. As Don was on watch, he got Paulie up 3 miles in advance so we could celebrate and toast King Neptune for allowing us to safely cross over to the S side of the equator. We had a bottle of wine from one of our "other boating experience" that was 11 years old. As we found it whole and unbroken in the sea when Don dove LaMecedora 1-2-2000, we thought it was appropriate to give it back to the sea. Besides, we tasted it and it was a little RANK! So we each had a shot of Sheridan's Licor De Cafe (Thanks Carolyn & Steve "MutineerV"!). Took movies of the GPS as we crossed and the Chart Plotter so we'd have a record of time & Lat & Lon and filmed Don saying Thanks to King Neptune! The water is great right now. The swells are about 6' but far apart and slow and easy. We've only had about 3-4 days of rough waters with 15' swells and about 10-11 seconds apart. That was in the ITCZ zone and so we expected it to be rough there. That's the area, for you that aren't familiar with it, that the Southern weather patterns and the Northern weather patterns meet up. It moves around and is hard to predict, exactly. But, thank goodness, we had great information from our new friend, Clark, who gave us great coordinates to take to avoid the worst of it as he emailed us from his home regularly during our ITCZ crossing giving us the current satellite locations as we were crossing and the best route to take We managed to be just on the outside of the worst weather and it never got to be bad at all. We also get weather grib files a couple of times a day. So we try to keep up with weather as we go along, looking a few days ahead to see if we need to change our coordinates to keep out of the bad weather. So far, we've stayed the course and haven't had to change. It rained for about 4 days on and off as we were in the ITCZ. Some of the drops were huge and we'd never seen drops so big. Except maybe during hurricane Jimena a couple years ago in San Carlos, Mexico. Nothing like that though.

We expect to be in the Marquesas in 5 days. We've gone 1949 NM from Cabo San Jose, Mexico, so far. We still have 686 NM to the Marquesas. Although we've expected it to be hot, it's not so hot as it is really humid. Right now (10:20 AM (MST) it 's 78 F. But the humidity is about 65%. So everything is WET on this boat. We are not using the generator to save on the fuel consumption. And as long as there is a breeze, it's not too hot. So we haven't had to use the AC. We have plenty of fuel as the extra fuel we put in the barrels (430 gals) have all been put in and we will use another 108 gals to the Marquesas. We've used 479 gals as of this hr.. So we 've used only 50 gals of the 1000 gals we have in the fuel tanks plus the 430 gals of extra deck fuel. We should have around 800 gals of furl left when we get to the Marquesas. If you're like me --- all of this is way "information overload"!!! But the 'Boys' seem to like to know these facts;>

From listening to the Puddle Jumpers Net, we are hearing that several boats will be arriving in the Marquesas around the same time. And we have some friends in the area already. We're anxious to get there and we'll let you know how it is. We should have wifi and will try to send some photos.

Til next time;>)

Don & Paulie M/V "Storm Haven"