1:53 pm

pos 6d 40 S - 111d 16 W
cog 264d wind SE at 19kts
Sail config: Reacher - Main 1 reef

...
Our friends from Savarna, the FIFTY THREE feet long sailing ship (NZ) whose path we crossed a week ago is ONLY about 65nm ahead of us (just got an email this morning). It's so amazing that I think Keith, the skipper, may have made an error when he wrote his longitude because not only their boat is 53', but it looks like an expensive mofo of a performance cruiser. Their speed potential is about 20% higher than ours (sqrt(53/38)) and so every day they should put an extra 40nm between us, and there are 5 of them aboard.
The other day we caught the mother of all flying fish. Well yesterday we must have caught her mother! We ate her this morning (I had her port side and Nat her starboard side. Didn't go all that well with the oats, milk and honey I had for breakfast, but, hey, one should always eat their road kills and thank Neptune for making the flying fish think our deck is a FAA approved landing strip. Indeed I am feeling bad for having thrown back in the water 26 (yes 26) little flying fish (all between 1" and 1.5" long) I should have made a little fish fry.

NAt made me read East of Eden, and I am really enjoying it against all expectation (I had never read it). About half way thru it now.

This morning I fixed the small burner on the stove which had stopped working. And we're making bread without a recipe... we'll keep you posted.
Now watching a couple episodes of Big Bang ..
Alan

9:16 pm
local time 7:10 pm
pos 6d 48 S - 112d 12 W cog/speed/wind same as before except for a a bit stronger wind.
We 're exactly in the middle of the time zone; we should turn back our clocks. Tomorrow will do.

So we just blasted the 1600 nm to destination mark a bit ago (now 1595). This means that we have covered 1400 nm in 9 days since the Galapagos and are just about 1/2 way there from the Galapagos (we passed the 1/2 way from Panama a while ago).
This afternoon we switched the reacher for the jib because the wind was staying mostly in the 18 to 21 kts range. Speed is not affected much (maybe a 1/4 kt but it's good to give the reacher a brake) Bread turned out, well..... let's say we ate it. Tasted appropriately like a large sea biscuit. Tomorrow we'll try again, I've found a recipe in a french boat cooking book. There is that long swell from the south that we've had for days now, but today it's deeper although the crests are so far apart that we can hardly feel it. It probably comes from a far away storm in the southern ocean; here it feels powerful but benign but you know that where it originated it must have been hell! These are big waves that have traveled more than 2000nm to reach us and although they now slope gently, you know that they used to be steeper, higher and a lot more scary!

Alan