Spent the whole day and night on the same 2 sail reach on port tack.  Wind got up but unfortunately so did the seas so we were (and still are) in the washing machine again.  Consequently no major human activity on the boat yesterday!  Pretty lively night (and I don’t mean at a night club!) making around 8 – 9 knots (even with 0.5 knot current against).  Wind went aft this morning so we are now sailing with poled out genoa. 

Question for those astronomers amongst you – what is the planet which we can see in the north east which rises around 3am our time (that’s GMT -10).   It’s as bright as Venus but we don’t think it is Venus.  Email us if you know.

No sign of any cetaceans although we have heard several reports that there are a lot of whales around.  We did get a very large fish(?) on the line when we had the spinnaker up but we couldn’t slow down and he was just taking all our line then with one big leap he was off with the tackle.  So we haven’t tried since (don’t want to catch a marlin!)  Few boobies around yesterday and one long tailed tropic bird this morning.

24 hour distance: 186 miles            Position:  S14:52:91 W156:59:23