This video was filmed at sunrise on day 6 of our pacific crossing, from Puerto Vallarte to the Marquesas Islands. With the sun rising and lighting up the sky, a pod of dolphins swam along with us for about 30 minutes. It was a wonderful way to start the day!

Day 28: 97nms, Day 29: 100nms, Day 30: 120nms, Day 31: 120nms. Miles to go: 226!!!!!

Day 28: When the sun rose, I counted 4 more flying fish on the boat. This makes our total at 20. One of those flying fish, flew right into the cockpit and landed by my feet. I didn't see him fly in, but I smelled him and then heard "flip, flip, flip." I immediately tried to pick him up, but every time I touched him, he'd "flip, flip, flip". Bucket in hand, I finally got him out of the cockpit and pitched him overboard. He left behind lots of blue scales to clean up. Onto sailing, we had good winds all day and night long. We both had our share of rain squalls also.

Day 29: At 5:30am, when the sun had light up the sky, we were again surrounded by storms. Tom was asleep and I was on watch. As a feeder band to a storm went over us, it brought some massive wind. Within just a few minutes, the winds built strongly to 50+ knots!!!! I immediately woke Tom and he took the helm. Since we have never had Gimpy Limpy Tanga in such strong winds and we don't know her threshold nor do we want to find out, we decided to heave to and ride out the wind storm. We sat in the cockpit, with our life jackets on, safety harnesses on, while watching the swells roll under Tanga. Around 10:30am, the winds died down to a comfortable 15+ knots, and we moved along again. We had wonderful following seas and good solid winds all night long. There were many squalls in the area, but we didn't get hit by any rain.

Day 30: We had left over winds from the previous day, all day long with those wonderful following seas. We found one squid on our solar panel which brings the squid count to 2. There were very few squall looking clouds at night, otherwise, it was a very clear star covered night.

Day 31: We had lighter winds today but still had those wonderful following seas, and made 4-5knots all day. The winds picked up in the evening and lasted throughout the night. Along with the winds, came some choppy and steep swells. Some of the swells would push us one way or other, so during our night watches, we were constantly making steering corrections. Very clear star covered night.

On to some very exciting news....did you see the "miles to go".....226!!!! WOW!!! We are both very excited and can't believe that we are almost there. No land in sight yet, but soon very very soon. We both want to be the person to say "LAND HO". We are estimating that we will arrive in Baie de Taiohae, on the island of Nuka Hiva, on Tuesday or Wednesday. WOOHOO!!!

Here's an interesting fact, I read in one of our cruising guides. The island groups of the French Polynesia are the Society Islands, the Tuamotu Archipelago, the Marquesas Islands and the Austral Islands. The four island groups consist of 109 islands spread over an ocean area of 1.5 million square miles. BIG.

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Day 27: 70 nms. Miles to go: 648 A long read but it was a long boring night watch so I typed a lot. Like you wanted to do work today instead?

Today started like most others, with Monica waking me for my first morning shift. But it ended with full bellies. Mahi’s like their meals to be trolled at 4-6 kts which poses a problem for us in our crippled state of sail. Our best speeds are presently 5kts, but only in a 20kt breeze, usually we ghost along around 3kts (you probably walk faster) and this must be carefully managed so fishing for the last two weeks has been frustrating. We have had schools of Mahi swimming with us for the past few days laughing at every lure we threw at them, but a few have bit. Most get off either by breaking the line or by spitting the hook at us. One lucky 20 pounder even got gaffed aboard only to flop off the gaff, land on deck, stick up his middle fin at us and flop right back into the water.

We watch the Mahi feed on flying fish all day. By the way, if you were light enough, you could walk from Mexico to the South Pacific on the backs of the flying fish. There are gazillions of them. When Mahi feed on them; the Mahi will chase the fish from the water then follow them till they land and then consume. The speed that the Mahi swims to accomplish this is impressive.

We had been assaulted by a couple flocks of flying fish during the night, and five of these brave souls chose to land and attempt to chase us off as they dried with a very smelly death. In all, 5 fish landed aboard last night so we filled up the bait can (an empty coffee can) with the spoils and got to rigging up the death stick. Until this point, we had been discarding the dead fish each morning and using lures (we never claimed to be bright). So in goes the first flying fish, on a hook the size of a bluegill; sure enough 30 seconds later, whamo! He was wise though; he wrapped it around the rudder before I could get him clear and snapped the line.

The second attempt was much more fruitful. Within 5 seconds of the bait hitting the water, it was hit and spinning the drag out. Fish On is the call we use to alert us into our respective duties; mine is to keep the fish busy while Monica brings us into a hove to position (putting Tanga in park). After we were hove to, the fight lasted about twenty minutes until we could get him close enough for Monica to lean over the side and gaff him. So during the first pass she gets a good gaff in him and starts lifting; it’s at this point we realize we hooked a lot more fish than we intended, she couldn't lift him over the lifelines at the angle she was at so she attempted to reposition and he flopped off the gaff, but the hook stayed in (all praise Neptune). So another 5-10 minutes trying to bring him close to the boat, this time when he saw the boat he would run, guess he didn't appreciate a hook being run through his body the first time? The second try at gaffing him, Monica has a good position and makes a perfect strike, she hoist him up and over the lifelines and sure enough, he flops off the gaff again and jumps back in the frickin water, tangling the line around rigging and lifelines, but the dang hook still stays in! (We think Neptune felt guilty for the way he has been testing us on this voyage so he worked with us on the Mahi) This time it only took a couple minutes of fighting to get him back to the side of the boat as he was pretty fatigued by now. Again, Monica makes a perfect gaff and up he comes over the lifelines, and wouldn't you know, it he flops off again! Except this time, we both jump on him like he's the last piece of candy from a piñata and pin him down with our best wrestling moves as he tries to return to the water. We were able to keep him held down until we could manage to get him into the cockpit. Once there, I got the pliers out to remove the hook, opened his mouth and there it was, just laying freely on his tongue!

He weighed forty pounds before cleaning and he filled our fridge with fresh fish after being fillet. Thank you ma, pa, and my aunt and uncle for teaching me to fillet so well as a kid, the lessons paid off.

Monica cooked up some of him by deep frying nuggets in a batter given to us by a friend of hers in Phoenix; it was AWESOME!! Thanks Debbie, for the "A$$ Kickin" (name brand) fish batter. For the next few days we will be eating Mahi and expect to be very tired of it by the time we hit the islands.

In all it took us 4 hours to catch, clean, clean up, cook, and eat before we were under way again, but well worth the delay. Photos when we get Wi-Fi.

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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.

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Day 21: 27 nms, Day 22: 60nms, Day 23: 53nms. Miles to Go: 906

Day 21: When the sun rose, it looked like we were in the eye of a hurricane. We were completely surrounded by dark thunderstorms. Since we were both exhausted from staying up all night, due to the numerous storms we had that night, we decided to heave to. We spent the day resting, sleeping and eating a bit. Around 5:00pm, both of us feeling refreshed, we continued on our way. The night was uneventful and the sky was full of stars. We both got to watch the bioluminesence from the squid in the water, which was pretty cool to see.

Day 22: Without the mainsail and no following seas, we are slowly moving along. We played Yahtzee in the afternoon to help pass the time. The night was again, clear and full of stars, including views of the milky way.

Day 23: The day started with nice winds, moving at 4 knots (this is currently a good speed for us). At about noon, the winds died. We had extremely light winds all afternoon, evening and night. We had another clear night, full of stars, the milky way and squid watching.

All is well on Tanga and the crew is still smiling. We're both excited about hitting the equator very very soon!!!

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