Day 9, Saturday April 24. If it weren't for the ships log I would not know how many days we had been at sea, nor the date. We have logs for everything, finding memory unreliable. Every time the engine is used a log entry tells for how many hours it was run, fuel used, purpose. Fuel usage is logged, like a bank account for each of the tanks, with fuel in, fuel out, and fuel remaining. Engine maintenance, batteries, watermaker usage and maintenance, rust and general maintenance are logged too. Every entry dated.

For year and a half I used to keep a journal, in which EVERYTHING was recorded, but it took so long to find when I last changed the gearbox oil, for instance, that I dropped that in favour of categorized logs. All logs in a 200 "paginas" school exercise book, bought in Panama.

The waves are like adolescents. Friday afternoon schoolboys. We are jostled, sometimes violently, rolling rail to rail, throwing anything not securely stowed below across the cabin, onto the floor. They don't mean it. I sit with small limes nudging my bare feet, like kittens below the table. They were in a bowl ON the table. They will be tidied up eventually, but for now the limes just add to the surrealism of it all. Adrienne made a cup of coffee, ship lurched, coffee now a cleanup job. I set my beer down to get something - gone.

Spoke with Gary on Sea Flyer before the Amigo net. One more lower shroud broken, total 3 out of 4, and one more chain plate. Ham (licensed amateur radio operator) on the PacSea net admitted he had been "too pragmatic" with Sea Flyer the night before, denying him access because he did not have a ham call sign. Gary said to me in an email: "I knew those guys on the Pac Sea net where not sailors. If they think 3 out of 4 lower shrouds broken and a chain plate pulled out when 1200 miles from shore is not an emergency." I reported his position and gave an update on his condition to the PacSea net.