This morning as of 7:30am we have now broken our record for longest continuous use of spinnaker, 24hours. Our previous record was not recorded but was closer to 7 hours. The wind remained fairly gentle through the night at 10-15k with a few peak periods with winds from 15-18k. It was a clear, beautiful night and very calm. Absolutely dreamlike. A bit chilly (upper 60s I'd say) but otherwise perfect.

The weather so far today is lovely with a nice 10-15k wind from the SE though it was tending to veer a bit to the East, it has not got some more South in it and we are making good progress. Yesterday evening it was damn near from the South (170) and we were ripping along with the chute out like a big reacher making 7.5k in 12k True. Alas, we are happy to make 5k as most of the time we have been under 5k, this is a very slow passage so far. Our slowest to date I am sure. In the past we would rarely leave up the spinnaker and be happy with 4-5k - we would always motor-sail instead. Now with our recent breakdown and repair experience, we are nervous about over-using the transmission. We have only got about 10 or 12 hours on it so far and we are not convinced the slightly different vibration and noise it makes are not important.

Anyway, its breakfast time now. Everyone is up and we are running the engine to charge batteries. The watermaker is running and the freezer is chilling. At 8am the morning net (radio net of other voyaging boats in the area) comes on and we can listen to weather analysis and reports, an there is a guy who reads the BBC headlines which he gets in e-mail digest form nightly. One of the high points of our day.

At 10:30 I heard a funny noise, from outside. Two times. Three. Then it hit me - FISH! I screamed out FISH and run up to the cockpit and started reeling. It was a fighter, but we were not optimistic after the Skipjack we threw back yesterday. When we saw it break the surface and saw a flash of blue we both thought it was a Skipjack. But alas, it was a beautiful bright neon blue Dorado (Mahi Mahi or Dolphin fish). As we hauled it in we could see the shocking blue change to the familiar golden greenish shimmer of a Dorado. It was about 30lbs and after I did a terrible job filleting it (I do Tuna much better, something about the bone structure of the Dorado makes it very hard to do well) we cleaned up the blood from the deck and put away all the gear.

At 5pm we are moving along nicely under gray skies. Sometime in the afternoon the clouds rolled in. No rain so far, though I have seen one squall in the distance. There does seem to be a lightening in the horizon to the West, so we are hopeful of some sunshine tomorrow. We are making 6.5 - 7.5k with 15-20k from the SE and have about 300nm remaining to reach Sola.