What a wonderful night of sailing; seas are flat and there is a light breeze on the beam of about 6-9 knots which Surprise loves, regularly matching or exceeding the windspeed with boat speed. The wind swings through about 50 degrees, from 280 to 330 about every 10-15 minutes and the autopilot, set to steer to the apparent wind, just keeps her in the groove. At one point last night the wind got up to 11 and we were doing just shy of 9 knots so we tucked in a reef (who ever heard of reefing with 11 knots of wind???).

We're getting closer to the point where we will begin to see the wind direction shift aft and following that, the trades which will carry us to the equator. It is hard to imagine that the sailing could be better than what we have now.

Almost perfect. We'll have our first flogging today; the cat is out of the bag. Someone put paper in the head and jammed the valve on the pump; not a difficult fix, but not pretty. No names, you'll recognize the crewmember from the scars. (Note to potential crew members: ixnay on the HandiWipes, but offering to both cook dinner and do the dishes goes a long way toward softening the blows.)

Whistle, harmonica and ukulele practice this morning - the diesel provides great cover for stumbling through new tunes, and the fish don't seem to mind concerts on the foredeck any time. Some of us have noticed that it's usually time to run the diesel shortly after the iTunes Irish Playlist is dialed in, but we're not taking it personally. Knot tying practice is also in full swing - turns out nightwatches are great for getting them down by feel. Early evenings are best for star watching novices, as the sky is so crowded later that it makes identifying even the big ones a bit challenging.

Last night there was a shaft of light along the sea from Venus to Surprise. But the real treat was to watch the sliver of a moon set. As it hovered on the horizon, it's shape slowly morphed into an orange oval; then, silently, it relinquished its life to the sea. One of the neat things about two night-time watches is that you can see how much the constellations have moved in six hours. Copernicus notwithstanding, the stars really do rotate around the Polaris! Did I mention that the food on this craft is great?

Scones are in the oven. Life is good.