Days 38 & 39 11:08.8S 128:04.3W

Five Islands
John & Sue
Tue 26 Jun 2012 18:31
The winds seem to be finally returning a little. We have averaged 5kts over the past 24hrs although the winds were very variable last night due to frequent squalls in the area. The seas are a bit choppy as a consequence but we are sliding along quite comfortably. We reached the halfway point between Panama & Fiji last night and now have 3070nm to go to Fiji. We caught another Mahi Mahi yesterday and had fresh fish last night for dinner - 'Sauteed Dorado with Creole Tomato Sauce', a recipe from the book "An Embarrassment of Mangoes". It was really good. Although the dinner was a success the bread baking during the day was not so good. I made up the normal batch of bread dough and instead of using to make the regular 2 loaves i split it in 2 and made a regular loaf and a plait with olives, capsicum & sun dried tomatoes. The oven on board has only one rack, so to save gas i straddled the smaller loaf tin over the larger baking dish. The first 15 mins went well but after i had rotated it (there is one round burner in the base of the oven and if you don't rotate it burns in one spot) we must have had a bit of rock and roll which dislodged the small loaf tin which ended up squashing one end of the plaited bread underneath it. We still had it for lunch but part of the plait was 'flat bread'. Miss Kitty and i cleaned the fridge and freezer out yesterday and discovered the drain at the base of the fridge was blocked, so John & Nigel cleared it. Hopefully it will work as the job of cleaning out the fridge was not a pleasant one (it comes to about waist high from the floor, so not terribly elegant when you are leaning over, feet in the air trying to reach the bottom). Still not a lot of wildlife around, although more birds are starting to appear. The Flying Fish are the exception and are our constant companions. Received an email from Terry and Elaine (Virgo's Child), they have just left Tahiti heading for Moorea. Would be nice to catch up with them somewhere.