Sea, sky, and another 130 miles under the keel. There is not much new to report each day, so I have not been sending daily updates. This passage so far has lived up to the reputation that the “milk run” Pacific passages are famous for–warm weather, gentle breezes, and consistent daily runs over a deep blue sea. The first almost 700 miles since leaving Galapagos have slipped into the wake in a wonderfully relaxed fashion. Of course, I am not going to use those first days to confidently extrapolate that the rest of the trip will be the same, and indeed Simba just now informed me that he suspects that there may be a problem with the engine mounts because the engine was “jumping around” more than usual when he started it to charge the batteries last night. Hopefully that is not the problem, since we don’t carry spare engine mounts nor any way to repair the ones on which the engine is currently sitting. Checking the engine just moved to the top of my list of things to do this morning. We haven’t had a bite on our fishing lines yet on this passage, but at least there are signs that we are surrounded by life even if it is not interested in he lures we are dragging behind us. We have seen one large pod of dolphins, have had a shark trailing us, have scattered great schools of flying fish, and have enjoyed the constant company of petrels tip-toeing on the waves around us. I am sure it is just a matter of time before some fish gets curious enough to take a bite at our spoon or pink squid. There is a little more space in the food lockers with each passing day, but we are keeping up with most of our water usage by running the small watermaker for a couple of hours every day when the sun is high. We catch the drips and eventually fill our drinking water containers. We can make water at the rate of about a gallon and a half per hour for the modest cost of 6 amp-hours of electrical power and the small mental drain of having to listen to the machine churn way beneath the settee. So, so far we are in good shape in that department. Time to go take a look at the engine…