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Position: 12550N17740W 11/15/08 1430L UTC -11 We’re five days out of Johnston Atoll. The trip has been going fairly well. We caught a 4 foot Wahoo on the second day out and have been enjoying many meals from it since. The weather has been a mixed bag. The day time has been pretty good, but night time has brought squalls. Some of which have lasted for a long time, causing the Captain and crew to tend to the boat and lose a lot of sleep. We keep hoping that we will finally experience a night without them, but it doesn’t look like today is the day, because there are a lot of threatening clouds on the horizon. Our buddy boat, Shambala with their crew of four, is a couple hundred miles ahead of us. They departed Johnston Island one day before us, due to Katie coming down with a stomach bug (we suspect it was caused by eating a too green coconut). We’ve had one equipment failure so far – a fairly serious one. The roller furler for our headsail won’t furl anymore. If we try to force it, the head stay wire furls along with it – not a good thing, because twisting the head stay wire could cause it to break, which would result in the mast falling down. In the mean time, we can’t reef our headsail. But we would like to be able to do so, especially during squalls. We’ll just have to work around it and press on (sailing in the squalls is very sporty). We will sort it out when we get to Majuro. The windy, squally weather has had a couple of benefits, we’ve been making good mileage toward our destination. Yesterday we had our best daily run yet – 146 miles, averaging 6.1 knots. Not bad for only a 22’ waterline. It has been windy enough to keep our wind generator spinning, which allows us to keep the frig running and make ice from our Popsicle molds. The ice is much appreciated for our daily ration of grog. Our two solar panels are also contributing a good deal of energy. We participate each evening on the local Majuro radio net and it appears that many other cruisers are headed up from the south pacific to spend the holidays at Majuro. It will be nice to have fellow cruisers to celebrate with. 1335 miles sailed. 743 miles to go.