Happy Birthday, Captain Sean!

Sofia, Sean, Andy

Most important things first: today is Sean's birthday, and we've already celebrated with lunch on deck, and a yummy Swedish chocolate kladd kaka (literally "messy cake") for desert. We couldn't get the candles to go in the breeze, but decorated Sean's slice just the same. Rumor has it we're having lamb and potatoes for dinner, though once again, how Sofia manages to cook real food with the rock-and-roll of the boat like this is quite the mystery to the rest of us.

We had an excellent spinnaker run yesterday afternoon, hitting 11 knots a number of times in the puffs. We went back to wing-on-wing with the jib for the overnight watches, and the seas and winds have built since yesterday, so we're continuing to steam along, steadily chewing up the miles.

Sofia loves driving.

As Anne types this, Sofia is driving, and entertaining herself trying to dip Andy's feet in the water - he's riding on the seat in the bow pulpit, and with the sea state, the bow does sometimes dip all the way down to the top of the waves as they go by. Everyone's taken turns sitting up there in the sunshine - it's the best seat in the house, better than the best rollercoaster.

Wind and weather continue to behave beautifully, with just small fair-weather tradewind clouds and bright blue skies. The sea is getting ever so slowly a lighter blue, too.

Flora and fauna count:

• a few seabirds (larger, white and brown, hugging the wavetops)
• lots of flying fish
• 3 kamikaze ex-flying fish on the deck in the morning (we've had to add a new duty to the morning watch chores: clean up the night's collection of small, sadly dead, fish. Why they choose to leap onto the deck at night is beyond us.)

30 Nov 2009 21 09.674N 30 23.015W

- Anne, for WT