Carol's Birthday

Carol with birthday cake

Another birthday to celebrate this month, #67 for me. The first treat of the day was to empty out the shower of all the storage items there, heat the water, and have a real shower! There is a cake to be made this afternoon and steaks marinating for dinner. I'll miss having facebook to read birthday wishes.

We have been keeping some wind now for days. The last two we travelled wing and wing as we are trying not to get too far south. That combo gives a very rolly ride, however. Today the spinnaker is up and we are going SW with an east wind. Overnight we will need to change tacks NW. We don't leave the spinnaker up at night as it is a half hour job on deck in the light. Sat and Sun there are squalls and higher winds forecast. I'm not sure what that will do for the direction. Last low pressure the winds clocked.

Thurs was our record daily distance, 157 nm. Usually we cover about 130. The first boat may finish tomorrow. We are estimating next Sat. As it is the Easter weekend there will not likely be anything open until the Tues. Wed night we travelled close to Libby so could talk on VHF and also passed another Japanese fishing boat. They were exactly on a course towards us. Thankfully Rob had spent a few hours soldering on a spare antenna for the AIS which does work now for about 6 nm.

We continue to get flying fish in the cockpit-some as long as 6 in. We haven't tried to fry them yet. Last night the fleet decided to do the net differently. We emailed our positions to OM and he sent them back later in the evening. Then people shared other news like fishing, sailing conditions and sail plans, things needed, and even 2 poems.

We continue to get lots of books read, especially at night. I'm enjoying the history in "Lawrence in Arabia" now. It was time to take a break from " whodunnit's". I hear it is starting to warm up at home. Here it is fall heading into the southern winter but we probably won't notice that until Australia.