All's going well, we have a nice steady 18 knots of wind from the NNE, so we're really in the trade winds now. It picked up to about 25 knots from about 3am this morning, I'm glad Greg was on watch, he got me up once to reef down to no. 2 reef, and we were racing along at 9 knots or so. Our friends on Talerra, 90 miles behind us had no wind, funny!

I'm on watch now, Greg's been trying to have a sleep. He's tried a few times today but hasn't been able to get any shut eye since he went on watch a 2am this morning. His mind is always working at a million miles an hour and he's always updating and changing systems whether it be the sails or the computer systems or the radar etc etc. I just have to keep him fed and watered to keep him going. Have been able to BBQ the last few nights which is nice as it keeps the heat out of the cabin. Yesterday, Greg finally worked out how to put a guard zone onto the radar which will warn us when a ship comes to within 12 miles of us. Prior to that we would set an alarm to go off every 30 minutes, then we'd switch the radar from stand by to active to check, we still do the alarm system on our watch system at night to wake us up if we've drifted off to sleep. We've only seen 3 ships since we left but a boat 2 days ahead of us said they saw 10 in a 24 hour period. One came close enough for them to get churned up in their wash and that was after calling the ship and asking them to stay clear. These ships are bigger than us and often want to come closer for a look see, but it's scarry for us little yachts.

We talk to our pals on the other yachts 2 - 3 times a day. There were 3 of us that left the same day. We are the lead boat of the three but there are others out here ahead and behind us that left before and after us from Zihua and Puerta Vallarta. Now and again we can talk to them on the different Marine skeds. Quite a few of them are Ham operators, so they also check into the Ham skeds, which we can't do, although we can listen. They're so busy with skeds, they have to be really regimented about when they sleep, eat and take their watches so they can be awake for all the different skeds. Talerra has to take the auto pilot off and hand steer whilst the other is on the radio or sending emails as both of those affect the auto pilot (send it crazy off course). We have a wind vane steering system, so it doesn't affect us.

Once we get to land we will post our crocadile photo in our blog photo gallery. We forgot to mention it in the previous blogs and emails that there was a huge crocodile in Marina Ixtapa in Zihuatanajo, it lives there permanently and is about 10-12ft long. It hangs around the Marina and everyone locks up their dogs, cats and little children in case they get too close. It's often seen out on the marina docks, so a bit scarry coming back to the boat at night after being out on the town.

14:30 Hooray, at last we've caught a fish, small but I'm sure a very tasty Mahi Mahi, we've trolled 2 lines for most of the 750 odd miles and this is the 1st fish. Two of the other boats hadn't started fishing as their freezers were full and Talerra hadn't caught anything either. Maybe they'll have news also on this afternoon 16:00 chat session. #

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