Day 24: 68nms, Day 25: 70nms, Day 26: 76nms. Miles to go: 711

Day 24: We had good winds in the morning, making 4-4.5knots. The winds lightened up in the afternoon through the night, but still made 2.5-3.oknots. The night sky was star covered with a few ugly stormy clouds passing by, but we saw no rain.

Day 25: Again, we had good winds all day, afternoon, and evening. Around 2:00am, the winds died completely, and we hove to for the remainder of the night. We took turns doing 30 minute watches. I got up at 5:30am, cleaned up the cockpit from our "night stuff", made a pot of coffee, and woke Tom. We began sailing again around 6:15am. We sailed along nicely all day and night. The night was star covered with only a few clouds passing by, with no rain.

Day 26: EQUATOR DAY!!! We found one flying fish in the morning, bringing our total count to 10. The winds were light in the morning and picked up in the afternoon. As we got closer to the equator, the winds slowed which made the GPS latitude tick slower. It was like waiting for a pot of water to boil. When we were about 8 miles away from the equator, a huge pod of porpouses and dolphins swam by us. This pod went on for about 3 miles. We saw a few babies swimming very close to their mama's. At the same time, we must of had about 200 Mahi around our boat. We think they were gathering together around our boat for protection from the porpouses? Just a guess, we're not sure. Either way, they didn't like our lure we had in the water, but we weren't going fast enough for them to bite. We like to think the dolphins, porpouses and mahi were all gathered around us to guide us across the equator! The change from polliwog to shellback happened at 5:15pm with the proper salute to Neptune. Here's the poem we wrote and saluted, along with some champagne for all:

Almighty and Benevelent Neptune Although, at time, you can be a goon, we will be arriving in the Marquesas soon. We think you are mischievious, and this passage has been tedious. You are the Ruler of the sea, we must Honor thee. As we polliwogs cross the equator and each become a shellback, we ask that the remainder of our voyage be laid back. It is with this poem and bubbly that we salute thee.

And with that, we were/are in the southern hemisphere. We didn't see any signs saying Welcome nor did we see the equator, but it's nice to see a S for South on our latitude. Oh, and we're counting up now. Ever since we left San Francisco, we have been watching our latitude drop, now we get to watch it go up. Anyway, crossing the equator is a big mile stone for us. We know we should be hitting land fall in less than 10 days, and the count down has begun! The Tanga crew is good and still limping along with no mainsail.

Posted via satellite phone.

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