Northern Hemisphere

No change that I can see. The water is still blue, the waves are still rolling and the wind still blowing, but apparently now the water splashing across the deck and slipping away behind Ella's Pink Lady, is northern hemisphere water!

I couldn't have asked for a better day to cross the equator, flat seas,15knots of wind and sunshine. We crossed the line at 2017 utc doing 5 and a half knots and celebrated with the usual toast to Neptune, the traditional dunking in salt water and plenty of excited phone calls. I also had a few presents stashed away, especially to open for the occasion. They were mostly chocolate which turned out to be very melted! Neptune was toasted with fruit juice and plenty of chocolate. I'm not normally one to toss good chocolate into the sea, but I figured that this was my chance to get myself into Neptune's good books. I'd hoped that my generous offering might by rewarded with a fish on my line but no such luck!

I thought that crossing the line would be just like any other day out here, so I surprised myself a little by getting a bit emotional as I juggled three different cameras while counting down the latitude read out on the GPS. It's not so much physically crossing into the northern hemisphere that had me so worked up (you can only get so excited about an invisible line in the water!!) but the fact that it meant the end of the first leg. Sure this has probably been one of the easier legs (call it the shake down!) compared to some of the sailing down south to come. But the distance we've already covered is pretty amazing. Getting this far (and everything that happened before the start line!) has given me the confidence to know that even though we've got some seriously tough times ahead, we're going to be able to have fun tackling whatever comes our way.

Great sailing overnight again so we're well into the northern hemisphere and well on our way to Kiribati Island which we might be rounding by late tomorrow. It's been a slightly eerie feeling with overcast conditions all day but I think it was more my imagination than anything and Ella's Pink Lady has made steady progress, so I can't complain.

After all the celebrating and fun yesterday I got back into a few jobs today (not that jobs and maintenance aren't fun too!). I'm sure keeping on top of even the slightest little potential problem will pay off in the end and keeping busy keeps me more than happy.

We've finally got a bit of a moon out here this evening, I'm not sure about dinner yet but I'm thinking of attempting some kind of apple crumble with stewed fruit for dessert. A bit of ice-cream on top would go down pretty nicely too but maybe it's better not to think about that!

Thanks to everyone for all the congratulations. Sounds like plenty of people had a great time celebrating on my behalf as well! But I still say the credit all goes to Ella's Pink Lady and the amazing team that got her to the start line. I'm just along for the ride!

Jesse