Just as the sun was setting some dolphins appeared and swam around our bow. As we are only travelling at 5knots they quickly tired of us and dissappeared. The sunsets out here away from land in these tropical waters are to be seen. The vastness of the ocean creates a stage for layers of paralel sunsets. In different corners of the unblocked horizon appear cities of clouds all unique and all so far from each other they could be in different provinces or even different countries. Some cloud formations rise up like mountain ranges, others spread out flat. As the sun sets they all capture it's orange light in their own way. Yarramundi leaves a tiny colourful wake as if to say I am here too. A few hours after sunset we got to see a similar scene in reverse as the moon rose directly behind. This time our wake is more visable and the scene is more of contrasts between light and dark instead of splashes from the sun palette.

At 1am I went to bed and Nicky took over. I slept soundly till 6, woke, checked and was pleased to see good progess overnight so settled in for a coffee and muesli with soya milk. Not to mention some Tang. I was brushing my teeth when the satphone rang. Neither of us could answer it in time. No caller ID and no voice mail. As few people have the number and it is an odd time to recieve a call I emailed all the people we have on our emergency list sending an email stating that 'we recieved a call but do not know who it is from. Our beacon has been acting up but we are ok.' About 15 mins later it rang again and it was my father asking if I was ok. When I said yes, we are safe and the boat is fine, still on course. He responded with heavy 'thank god for that.' He reported he had a call from 'US Emergency' saying they got an alert message from us. As it was not AMSA (Australian Maritime) or the Coast Guard I can only assume it was the emergency service connected to our beacon. I spoke to both my parents, reassured them we were ok and then proceeded to write another email to our emergency contacts telling them they might get a call but we are ok. What I did not know was that since recieving the call from 'US Emergency' my mother had contacted my uncle Emmett, who knows about boats, and asked him to call Search and Rescue. I therefore got a call from a friendly AMSA man asking if we were ok. Luckily I did pickup in time to explain or we might have had the Guam and or Yap coastguard out looking for us. It seems AMSA get calls from unlces who know about boats at the request from worried mothers all the time. He was chuckling at the end of the call and wishng us a pleasant journey. Worringly, he did not have the float plan I had lodged with AMSA Search and Rescue prior to our departure. I still have not tracked down entirley the source of the false alarm so that is this morning's little project. We are now less than 30miles from Yap so hope to see the island state in a couple of hours. I have increased the revs from 1,800 to 2,000 so we can arrive before the sun is too low and gets in our eyes. The port entrance is from the east so we will be sailing into the sun until we anchor.

David