Mary, Mungo and Midge crossed the Equator with us. Not sure where numbers 4 and 5 went but we are down to 3 resident Boobies. I surmised that numbers 4 and 5 woke up one morning and thought, this doesn’t feel like home anymore, and headed back east, following similar words of the 1939 classic staring Dorothy and Toto.

The three M’s show no signs of jumping ship. We chase them off. They come back. They fish in the morning and again in the evening, spending the rest of the day, squabbling, preening and dozing. Not unlike Dave and I. Not strictly true….preening has dropped down our list of essentials. 😀

We have two big bits of boats news.

Numero Uno. We crossed the EQUATOR. The display on the chart plotter swapped from N to S indicating we’re officially in the Southern Hemisphere. I expected to see Neptune on a sleigh of dolphins, surrounded by preening mermaids. He may have been there and I was just looking the wrong way. Still, it was fun as we offered a snifter of the hard stuff to honour his presence. Then had one ourselves. Photographic evidence exists although all you can actually see in my photo is Big Hair and little else.

Our second bit of news is that we are into the last 1000 miles. 977 to go according to the machine. Maybe a week at sea, although the last few days have been slow going after the heady 200 mile days of a week or so ago. We’re supposed to have wind and current all the way now so fingers, flippers and hair crossed for this.

Supplies are holding out well although the fishing has been really disappointing. On our Atlantic crossing we caught something pretty much every-time we put a line in. Not so in the Pacific. The tuna was nice but it was also several days ago. My weekly onion sort has just been completed. All pretty good. And of course you want to know about cabbage. Still two full ones. Dave did say to me one evening, we seem to have cabbage every time you cook. He’s a lucky boy.