We are currently broad reaching at 6.5 knots in a rather lumpy sea. The wind and our speed has increased considerably over the last 5 days with a frequent 7.5 knots which has been heartening. There is now a waxing moon that will now stay with us for the rest of the passage and there are lots of stars at last. We have had a number of cloudy nights with nothing to see except pitch black and the odd rain drop. The only stars I recognise are those of Orion which now lies just above the Northern horizon and what I think might be the Southern Cross... but I need one of our Antipodean friends to confirm that one.

The Pacific has been a bit of a disappointment so far. We have not had the reliable trade winds of the Atlantic and the sea has up to 3 different wave sets that combine suddenly to give big lumps in the ocean. One minute we are sailing along happily and then unexpectedly the boat does a big surge and crunch as it meets a wave at a funny angle, not comfortable for watch keeping or sleeping. Not so much Pacific as Chaotic.

We keep in daily contact with a group of about 10 boats covering roughly 800 miles of the route to the Marquesas. The nearest of these is a British boat called Shayele which was only 15 miles away at one point and close enough to talk with on the VHF radio. We are going a bit faster than them though so I do not expect to see them now for the next 1800 miles.

We caught our second mahi-mahi (also known as dorado or dolphin fish) today. These are beautifully coloured fish with a gleaming yellow back, a swathe of indigo spots and iridescent silver skin. It seems a pity to kill them. However, the one we caught today will feed us for 2 days and there is little waste...and no food miles!

As for other wildlife we seem to have left most of it behind us now. For the first few nights we had our retinue of gannet like birds but now these have gone and we are left with the tiny petrels who follow in our wake presumably looking for titbits thrown up as we pass and some birds that could be shearwaters that soar just above the wave tops.

Since writing this the seas have calmed down and become much more regular and we have had to stop fishing as we have caught 3 more mahi-mahi.