08:12.41S 107:23.53W

PACIFIC OCEAN

Awesome some would say but it is, in reality, mighty big - we have now been in this ocean for 8 days and nights - after the first twenty-four hour period we have not seen another yacht although we saw a crossing freighter after night three. We spoke by VHF radio to Saga Mercedes, happy to find they were alert and had already identified us on AIS.

The ais system, compulsory for ships over 300 gross tons and due to cost reduction now increasingly installed in smaller boats and most sailing boats is an anti collision system. The equipment warns you with bearing and range' of any ship nearby and shows its closest point of approach and the real time lag to that point. An essential safety aid.

In St Lucia we were given a bottle of “Chairman’s Reserve Rum” as our reward for a successful crossing of the Atlantic - it has come into good use on the Pacific

“Brookie” flambéing some over-ripe bananas! We managed to bring the resulting blaze under control!

We are now about a third of the way across. The system for sailing the Pacific is to motor sail South. We reached the latitude 5 degrees South of the equator and that was not far South enough so we had to push on sailing now as we must preserve precious diesel to about 6 degrees South and further West than longitude 98W to pick up the SE Trade winds.

Now we are happily into the Trade wind belt and long may it continue. It yields steady winds of about 17 knots from the South East enabling Carango to forge her way West at about 7 - 10 knots. We started with 2980 nautical  miles to Hiva Oa [Marquesas - French Polynesia] and now after 8 days we have instruments telling us that we have 1880 miles to go.

We have hooked 2 fish a large Mahimahi, Dorado and a 20 pound Swordfish but both eluded us by breaking away in sight of the boat - we need to improve our finishing techniques to get these monsters on board. After the last battle I had  a bleeding face - two of us had hit each other, the deck was covered in salt and muck and we all looked pretty stupid. More training to come!