This is my 6th crossing and I have been told about them but never seen one. Yesterday I was woken by Charlie to say there was a green fishing ball and did we want it. So with Ed on the helm I called a MOB drill and told them it was me and they had to pick it up under sail. I got in my climbing harness and Ed put me right next to the ball so I could scoop it up and handed it to Charlie. We removed the 5 mussels attached and two crabs and it is wrapped up safe and sound in the wrecked north sails spinnaker.

Yesterdays other activities was to change to the number 4 from the blast reacher as we are now going fully upwind in about 11-15 knots of wind and to patch a small tear in the main that was made by the spreaders on the race.

The full extent of the crossing seems to be dawning on the guys today as they asked me ‘surely we are a 1/3 of the way by now’. Well in some ways we are! We are almost 2/3 of the way north but we aren’t even a 1/3 of the way east to SF so the half way party won’t be for quite a few more days and as we get headed more by the NE winds it is going to take longer and longer to be 1/2 way in terms of longitude!

This morning I was woken 3 times due to the excitement of seeing two other vessels. They didn’t come within 5 miles of us and when I hailed on VHF there was no answer. The rest of the fleet are doing well with a few problems two boats have returned to Hawaii, Deception is waiting on Hula Girl to do an at sea battery transfer as they have no power to start their engine and another boat has a starting solenoid issue on their engine. Fingers crossed we currently have not problems. There will most likely be a fire sale on the diesal and jerries I have onboard as we have only used 4.2g fuel since leaving almost 7 days ago and I have 70g aboard so all my customers in the Bay please don’t buy diesal until I get there and I will fill you up then!

position is 32 37N 149 49W