Then, today, amidst the biggest waves and the strongest winds of the second leg. It appeared again. A quiet small female Dorado, playing in the waves along the raft. Almost surfing. It's beautiful emerald body shining beneath the surface. The Penn rod was ready to be used. But as soon as I had it in my hand ready to pursue, the Dorado was gone. Cursed! I assumed a position overlooking the windward side of our raft. Sun from behind me to be able to see my prey. After about twenty minutes a much bigger bull dorado appeared as a silhouette in one of the waves. When the waves are high enough you can actually se the fish inside the towering wave. Like an aquarium. I made a cast maybe ten meters in front of the bull. He darted forward and took the bait. Like out of reflex. I tried to set the hook but the bait came flying at me. The Dorado disappeared. I threw again and again. But he seemed Uninterested. Or maybe he had felt the hook and didn't like it. Who would?

I changed tactics and used a small fish with a Mustad circle hook. Letting it skip just at the surface. Minutes turned to hours. When suddenly the bull came thrashing trough the waves towards my bait. But for some reason the bull shone away. Lurking some ten meters away. I tried to cast the bait closer. He pursued trying to take it. I free lined to let him take it easier. He took it. With the circle hook you should not set the hook. Just tighten the line. I let him almost swallow the bait before I did that. I could feel his weight. But he didn't seem to react. Just swam lazily away. I put on some pressure, he answered with a forceful rush of fifty meters ending in a spectacular jump. He took line as if it was nothing. When he had taken some three hundred meters I managed to get him to start swimming along the raft rather than from it. A big win since he had already taken all the fireline. Just some monofilament line to protect the spool left. He continued to jump. Wasting a lot of his energy. I gained little, but so did he. After a while he decided to go deep. I lost what little line I had and was forced to apply all pressure needed to stop him. He caved before the equipment or I did.

The most critical moment was still to come. The landing. Thanks to the steely nerves of the Tupac crew we managed to gaff him and put a towel around his head with ease. Dorados suddenly stop flapping about when you do that. Odd. The drama took maybe twenty minutes. The fish being rather big, just as the waves and the wind today. As we fishermen say when we caught one: tails up!

Last week was a week with low pressure and rainshowers. Everything got humid. Saturday the sun came back and we dried out sleeping bags and clothes. We have a dream to reach the fourties on February, 10th, which is Captain Signe's birthday. To do so, we need maximum luck with the winds. No matter our position, we are looking forward to the birthday party!

The last two days I've been reading Steven Callahan and John Caldwell's books. Callahan survived 76 days on a lifeboat after his boat sank. He survived thanks to his practical skills and mental strength. Caldwell, who had no sailing experience, bought a sailboat in Panama after the last world war to get to his wife in Australia. On his way he practised and learned to sail and navigate. His mast broke in a storm and he drifted for months. He managed to catch a few fish and birds, but also cooked his military boots, his belt, ate lipstick and drank motor oil to survive. Recommended books for sailors and armchair sailors.

Kon-Tiki2 departed Easter Island on 7 January and first sailed towards southeast. The rafts need to sail southwards in order to reach the eastwards winds and currents around 40°S. However, an abrupt reversal occurred on 11 January that took the rafts towards northwest instead. For some days, they sailed on a meandering path until they turned southward on 17 January. What happened between the 7th to the 10th of January?

The second picture from the climate.gov website shows that a westerly wind burst associated with El Niño occurred between the 5th and 9th of January and the wind was blowing in a west-southwesterly direction in the region that the raft was located at that time. This appears to be consistent with the track of Kon Tiki 2 in that period (see map in Kontiki2.com) and suggests that El Niño did influence the path of Kon Tiki 2 as it left Easter, but that this effect was brief.

During a regular night watch the observer can get attracted to bioluminiscent organisms in the sea. These are animals and plants that generate light when perturbed by the raft. One of our activities is to collect them. We are equipped with a net that has a very small grid. When the wind is weak, we don't move very fast. This is the ideal condition to deploy the net so that it doesn't brake from pulling too much. Also the specimens inside do not get crushed by a strong pulling raft. After an hour of patience we can collect the surface plankton sample. In a lab, we will be able to analyze them under the microscope.

We also filter out of the water the organisms that are capable of using the sun to generate their own food, the phytoplankton. They give us an idea of how much oxygen is produced and how much the pelagic ecosystem can produce; they are the basis of the food web. Finally, we extract DNA out of the water. The sea is a soup of cells and bacteria. They represent a library of genes available in the ocean. It is there in the blue, but we can't see it with our eyes. While Tupaq extracts macrofauna, dorados, to eat them, we extract microflora and fauna from the sea to study them.

In the first picture, you can see a greenish circle in the filter. This is condensed evidence that we are surrounded and outnumbered in the middle of the Pacific. The net is one of the tools provided by NIVA to help us better understand our environment. The photographic material is a courtesy of Evgenij Orlov.

Sometimes it does not pay off in a culinary way though, as when a Portuguese man of war (a type of jellyfish) yesterday got stuck in the wakes between the logs in the aft. The waves threw it back and forth tearing the tentacles of the poor thing. When it was disarmed a little wave served it to us by lifting it up on the decks. An excellent opportunity for taking pictures of this fascinating creature that occasionally has passed us by the last few weeks. Pedro, eventually picked it up with a pincer for a closer examination and now the little predator is lying in state inside a plastic bottle on our deck.

From a nutritional point of view, we had better luck last night when a 25 cm squid took a hike aboard the raft. Liv caught it and thought it could be used as bait later on. Well, for the lazy fisherman it is also a possibility to eat the bait yourself. Pedro took the opportunity to show off his Jamie Oliver skills, by slicing up and frying the squid in oil. We added some garlic and had soy sauce as a salivating dip. O, the taste was almost divine! Would have been a waste to feed it to the dorados.

By the way, the animal life is increasing in abundance around the raft as we go south, to more productive waters. Besides the already mentioned dorados, of which we saw one jumping after fly fish yesterday, sea birds are becoming increasingly common. And today we also saw an albatross. It would be fun to see whales again though. In that case, let's hope that Jimmy does not get too inspired by captain Ahab and grabs the nearest harpoon.

As a tribute to Yuri Senkevich, Torgeir Higraff, the leader of Kon-Tiki 2 mission, has invited two Russian doctors — Boris Romanov and Sergey Goltsov — to participate in his project. Boris Romanov sailed aboard Rahiti Tan from South America to Rapa Nui, and Sergey Goltsov took his place on the raft for the second leg of the expedition. Both have proved to fit well in Senkevich's shoes. Qualified doctors with extensive experience in athletic and extreme medicine, they are also investing substantial time and effort in making the expedition more visible to the public.

Sergey Goltsov is a storytelling gem. His daily reports (that keep coming in spite of poor connection and other technical difficulties) are full of vivid metaphors and poetic imagery to convey the power of the Ocean and emotional diversity of the team. 'Just another regular day on the raft' becomes a real adventure for lucky Russian readers! Boris Romanov is a truly charismatic presenter. Upon his return from Rapa Nui to Moscow, he was interviewed several times and has recently hosted a mind-blowing public presentation at the State Darwin Museum. Boris showed some pictures of Kon-Tiki 2 and told stories — abundant with detail and medical humor. «I decided to rather be a bad sailor than a good doctor, and it worked. We didn't have many health emergencies, I suck at tying knots, the fish is afraid of me, so I mostly did the dishes and assisted the heroic women of Rahiti Tane in handling night watches and navigation». Boris has compared managing the guara boards with playing a trombone, but he himself is a saxophone person and prefers a different approach to raft sailing. He says one should let the raft sail with the wind and the current, then adjust the course substantially, and keep sailing with minimal interference. Exhausted with constant humidity and having lost 12 kilos of weight, Boris already dreams of going back. He is convinced that Kon-Tiki 2 will accomplish its mission and reach South America, even if it happens later than expected. We stay tuned for Sergey Goltsov's reports!

[The pictures above were taken during Boris' speech in the State Darwin Museum in Moscow last week. Except the first, that is: Boris played the saxophone before the Kon-Tiki2 expedition]

Ola started the rescue operation by ordering two reefs in the sail. There was no damage to rig nor sail. Erik and Torgeir has their personal spoons and cups. The rest of the guys need to find more creative ways of eating soup. Dinner today at Tupac is Real Turmat.

In the first picture, Roberto is seen with the dismantled kitchen on deck. Picture 2 and 3 show a dynamic sea around the Tupac Yupanqui raft.

The worst damage was on our port side, where equipment weighing around 400 kg was lifted. The decks under the equipment fell down between the logs, and so the water plywood box with water bottles, deepsea robot and more fell down between the logs as well. The wave also created a large hole in the deck under the galley, and broke several other decks.

The wave was not a polite and shy visitor, it forced its way into the cabin as well. Several bed boxes fell down between the logs as a result of this, giving people a very crooked and unstable bed for the night. The fact that all our sleeping bags and clothes also got wet didn't make the situation any better, and it was a cold and dreary night.

Early Sunday morning the wind both eased and turned SE, and so we took the sail down. Sunday was spent repairing, a slow process in the complete chaos. After a long day of work the raft started looking like a raft again, and it's now possible to walk on deck again rather than jump from box to box between the debris. Today, Monday the work continues, repairing the decks under the galley and outside the cabin door, where there is now only a large hole.

Damage aside, we sailed far during the gale. In the 24 hours between midnight Friday and midnight Saturday we sailed 81.2 nautical miles! We made it to 37° 39' south! Now we face a new challenge: the forecast says we'll have close to no wind for the next five days. At least that gives us time to repair and get ready for the next round.

We all ran to the edge of the raft to have a closer look. Although I was safely standing on the deck, looking down on the big fish (around 2,5 meter long) when it swam by the raft less than a meter away, I felt both in awe and some chills along my back bone. Regardless of being on the upside of the water surface, my brain had no problems what so ever to imagine how it would feel to meet that razor-toothed hunter in the water. The perfectly shaped body, agile and fast, with the sharp and deadly end coming towards me. I imagined me, trying to get out of the water in a clumsy fashion, waving with all the limbs and pieces that might pose as an interesting bait for the predator from the deep seas. I wonder if I will dare to see a generic pirate movie ever again.

At least dr Goltsov does not have to worry about treating me for lost limbs due to shark attacks. From now on I will benefit from the rafts many options to wash ones self, in the safe space between the cross section balsa logs, protected by the long ship balsa logs that run below. Just another benefit of sailing a vessel that is half way submerged.

The morning begins with coffee made in a coffee pot, surprises and presents to her who sleeps least of all, gets tired most of all, every moment understanding, like any other captain, that she will be the first who will see a rock that might come out of the fog and the last who will leave the raft in case (Heaven forbid!) it is destroyed.

Lunch with freshly-baked bread and Norwegian cheese which has been in store for this day smoothly slides into dinner and swimming among crowds of birthday guests surrounding the raft – here we can see jellyfish of all shades, alone and in groups, crabs aiming at getting closer to the festive table and climbing right on our legs, spies from submarines (in fact this is our filmmaker Evgeny), small shoals of fish bustling in and out between the logs and groups of big dorados which create a festive atmosphere with their rainbow colors...

The presents are being taken out of the dark corners, not expensive, but very nice and unique because they weren't bought in advance but became presents here on the raft. Rasmus is putting a chocolate cake made by himself into the oven. The music pouring out from small acoustic speakers is turned down a bit and before supper we've prepared a real performance played by all the crewmates. Now let's get started to a guitar accompaniment...

Doctor Goltsov:
Hello, hello, my names Joe Monroe.
And I'm calling from Indiana.
Can I speak to Diana, please?
Am I speaking to my Diana?

Liv replies:
Oh, no, no, no! I'm not Diana.
I think you have got
The wrong number, my friend,
You've dialed the Rahiti Tane.

Rasmus, once again:
Hello, hello, my names Joe Monroe.
And I'm calling from Indiana.
Can I speak to Diana, please?
Am I speaking to my Diana?

Lisa, keeping on playing the guitar, in a whining voice:
Oh, no, no, no! I'm not Diana.
I think you have got
The wrong number, my friend,
You've dialed the Rahiti Tane.

Pedro can't rest:
Hello, hello, my names Joe Monroe.
And I'm calling from Indiana.
Can I speak to Diana, please?
Am I speaking to my Diana?

The filmmaker Evgeny filming all that:
Stop, stop, stop, stop... :)

And all together, in chorus:
Oh, no, no, no! There is no Diana!
You've dialed the birthday party 
Of Signe Meiling
Captain of Rahiti Tane!

Curtain-down. :)

Personally I'm way to impatient to spend more than 3 minutes with a fishing rod, so I'm impressed by Pedro that spent hour after hour trying to catch one. First with little success, but all of a sudden one early morning a hungry dorado actually took the bait! Pedro struggled to get it close enough so that we could grab it with the hook, but unfortunately, the fish got away. The bait was taken two times more but our prey managed to escape both times. Pedro looked frustrated and as the sun rose, it seemed like the dorados got uninterested.

Inspired by the almost successful attempts of Pedro, Sergey grabs a rod. It takes a couple of minutes, the sea surface is dead calm, the sun is slowly climbing the sky. But somewhere beneath the surface a dorado cannot resist the bait any more and Sergey shouts that he has something on the hook. Pedro, that has not lost his hunting instinct, grabs the large hook and quick as a cobra he managed to hook the fish before it swims under the raft. Once its on board, we try to get a towel over the eyes of the dorado, a way to make them calm according to our fishery mentor Jimmy aboard Tupac. We did not really get the towel where we wanted, but eventually we manage to get the fish under control.

It was with great happiness two of the main characters of the drama posed with the third one, that by this time was not able to feel anything at all. "Omega 3 vitamin" Sergey concluded with the 118 cm dorado in his hand and a smile almost as wide upon his face. Even when working as a fisherman, our ship doctor is always concerned about the health of his fellow crew members.

The rest of the crew smiled almost as wide when Pedro served garlic fried fresh dorado for lunch, and I found myself jiggling of joy when Lisa later served fish and chips for dinner. Bones and fins were cooked into a Russian styled bouillon, while Pedro kindly provided the rest of the fish some space in the scientific freezer for later consumption.

In a beaufort 0 sea state, the sea surface mirrors clouds when seen from above or fish and plankton from below the water. Diurunal plankton that are not very afraid of being eaten in plain daylight, are easy to spot. The neuston and pleuston are groups within plankton that drift on or right underneath, respectively, the surface; they sail with the wind. A flat sea allowed the observer to easily spot some species in these groups. The siphonophore man'owar is commonly encountered in the sea, but also on board RT. There are others like that jellyfish portrayed in the picture next to the raft. That day, a navy of hundreds of individuals surrounded the vessel. However, a stationary raft allowed for more.

Five stones attached to a CTD were casted down from the port side of RT. A time lapse of the enduring actvivity was taken from the mast, and one photo is shared. an electric motor is installed in the rafts center. It assists with the retrieval of instruments. One member creates tension on the spool side, starboard, of the motor. Anotjer one loops the excess because the line is retrieved faster than it is rolled into the bobbin. This is specially noticeable when all the line, approx 3.5km, is out and each coil is around the bobbins axel diameter only. One more rotates the bobbin by the sail to store the line. This process improves everytime and the crew becomes more and more experienced in deep casting. 2.8km of water where profiled. The stones came back full of sand and the bathymetric map indicates a depth between 2.7 and 3.1km. A sunset clean to the horizon, with stratocumulus clouds at mid heights, dorados jumping in the background, and a warm fish dinner were the reward for the hard working crew.

So far the maneuver had gone very well. Captain Ola on Tupac steered the raft well past Rahiti and onwards - full control. We were just a tiny bit to slow in realizing that their yellow safety line passed under our raft and got stuck on a guaraboard. During the first leg of Kontiki2 Ola and David devised a challenge. It was to jump into the water in front of the raft, dive down and swim under the raft, coming back up in the wake aft of the raft. The faster the raft sailed the easier it would get. This was a fun game, and we soon needed new challenges. The next was to dive down in the aft, swim forward and grab onto one of the guaraboards under water. Yesterday this went from being a game to being a very useful skill, as the only way to free the safety line was by pulling it off the guaraboards from below. The pressure from the line was so great that it wasn't possible to just lift the guara. Pedro and I jumped into the water with divingmasks and little by little freed the line from guaras and scientific equipment.

The plan is to have Erlend stay with us on Rahiti for a few days before delivering him back to his fellows on Tupac.

We have had a really fun week overall experimenting with cakes and food, but the highlight of the week would have to be that Sergey caught our first fish. A nice sized Dorado (Mahimahi) that fed the troop for a good couple of days. The first meal was fried fish mexican style for lunch, then a Mahimahi Russian Boullion at dinner and ending with a version of NZ Fish and chips, served with a lemon and caper dressing, was all divine and pretty special to be eating such a delicacy out here, fresh and in the open ocean. Being close to Norwegian celebration for Easter Signe made 2 dozen "boller" buns for the crew. They were the best buns I have eaten in a long time, and she baked these whilst trying to repair decking and getting our raft back in shape after the gale.

I tried a Lemon Drizzle Cake recipe from home, which was delicious. Light fluffy cake with a hint of lemon, drizzled with a lemon sugar syrup that seeped through the cake and giving the delicate cake a real zing. Rasmus' Chocolate Mud Cake was Signes cake request on her birthday, with her favourite pasta for dinner, and a spoil from Liv of Norwegian Goat Cheese for lunch. Liv and I were on watch that morning and she had to listen to our beautiful birthday singing as we served her a cappucino and almond cake as a pre-breakfast treat. Our dinners would look good on any table this week and we ate like kings!

• Thurs - Falafel, honeybaked potatoes, quinoa and lentils and Lemon Drizzle Cake for dessert
• Fri - Indian Daal with White Rice
• Sat - Spaghetti Bolognese
• Sun - Lentilles aux vin a la Pacifique and "boller" buns
• Mon - Coconut Curry with Peruvian Beans on White Rice
• Tues - Dorado, NZ fish and chips with Lemon and Caper Dressing and Mahimahi Boullion
• Wed - Creamy Garlic and Mushroom Spaghetti and Dr Fredrik Wikström Chocolate Mud Cake for dessert

The one meal that often gets a little short of creativity at the moment is lunch. We make fresh bread every second day, but we lose a bit of inspiration to pair it with a dish. So the effort this week will be focusing on lunch ideas and getting a bit more inspired about what to make at this time of the day.

The last couple of days have been some of the best since we left for South America. The moderate downwind has been steady for a longer period than ever before, the steering has been almost automatic, Tupac has been well within sight, fish are jumping into our pot, and the sun has been shining while the temperature has remained pleasant. This was not what I thought I could expect when I joined the expedition, but definitely what I hoped for. We have mended all the decks and things would have been perfect, if it was not for that worrying sound from the mast.

I'm afraid that I will have to be a bit technical at this point. Depending on the craft a mast can have many different positions, shapes and characteristics (in most cases they point more or less upwards). The masts of our two balsa rafts are pretty plain however and are supposed to point straight upwards. Yet, having a rigging of natural fiber poses a problem. The ropes are very prone to stretch, and in order to keep the mast in place, we have to tighten the stays and shrouds as soon as they become slack. Stretching stays is not a challenge in its own, but the rigging is designed to put up with strong downwinds. Therefore, we have 4 shrouds and 2 backstays, in total 6 points, that are all keeping the mast from moving forward (while also balancing it sideways). On the other hand, the position of the sail does not allow us to have more than 2 forestays, that prevent the mast from moving backwards. In the long run, this means that every time we tighten the stays and shrouds, this bias will, little by little, lean the mast backwards. The crew of the first leg got aware of the problem, so before we left Easter Island we made sure that the mast was leaning a lot forward. However, we did not know if we would have the possibility to repeat the procedure while at open sea.

The last couple of days, the mast has started to make squeaking sounds, which has been an indicator that it is starting to lean too much backwards. However, the forestays have been tight, not allowing any shortening, while the aft stays and shrouds have become more and more slack. Yet, as explained above, we have felt reluctant to tighten them. As a temporary solution Signe decided to move one of the shrouds a bit forward on port side, but the sail prevented us from doing the same on starboard side, and it was not a permanent solution anyhow. So yesterday, fueled by lentil patty burgers and good weather, we finally decided to take the bull by the horns and see if we could make the mast lean forward. However, to be able to do so we had to give some slack in the shrouds and aft stays, and we also had to lower the sail as the halyard functions as a stay in itself when the sail is hoisted all the way up. Even though the conditions were good, it was a bit scary to give up some of the control over the movements of the mast, and it was moving quite considerably. As Signe and I started to work, Liv was quick to join in. Lisa had to take over Liv's job while she was recovering after I banged my shoulder to her forehead (by mistake, I swear) whilst tying a rolling hitch. She recovered quickly and eventually everybody on board got involved in the stretching of the stays. In the end we managed to get the mast upright and the noises dissipated. It might seem like a small detail, but the knowledge that it was possible made us all really happy. As we got rid of one worrying factor, we took a small step on the way to that "live in the present" paradise. Thats all the worries for now, unless we come up with some new problems ... which I doubt will be very hard!

Credit for this activity is attributed to Andrey Chesnokov. Gladly, almost every other day, he stops whatever he is doing to deploy a net known as the manta trawl astern of TY. It is a "manta" because it filters particles from the sea surface in a similar way than that one the elasmobranch named after does. After two hours of trawling, Andrei retrieves the net and analyses the contents for plastics. The task is not easy and is time consuming. He finds plastics among plankton, stingy jellyfish tentacles, fish, eggs of many species and the parts of the vessel, sysal rope and balsa wood, as it disintegrates in the cruise. In this occasion, featued in the picture, an amphipod was caught among the sample contents.

Identification of the types of plastics that reach this remote locations help researchers in the fields of material technology to canalize efforts to develop better substitutes for those polymers that endure through time and do not degrade easily, and yet provide us with the daily life commodity of plastics. In this way, the kontiki2 expedition serves as an opportunity vessel and provides NIVA and NTNU with valuable samples for quality research. After the time consuming process of sorting contents out, Andrey prepares the net for the next deployment and awaits eagerly until is time for it. As the vessel approaches the continent, the task might become more and more interesting.

As at today we have two onions left, enough potatoes for 3 meals and we are starting to get into our dried and tinned products as we make our way into week 7. We had been lucky enough to not only catch a mahimahi the previous week, we also have a school of small fish that follow the raft and Mr Orlav our Russian photographer has been catching these for dinner when they are active. Signe has been a master chef again and spoilt us with lentil burgers on our sail down day and they were the best burgers we had ever eaten, couple that with some wedges and we had an amazing dinner plated on Sunday!

The Chocolate mudcake has become a staple treat and everyones eyes light up when Rasmus offers to make it for us. It just keeps getting better and better. We celebrated reaching the roaring forties and being east of easter island with falafels for dinner, and also treated oursleves to Cappucino's that Signe had brought for all of us and Norwegian Marzipan pigs from Asker. Needless to say, we were a smiling happy crew. We have also had a new crew member Erland who swapped from Tupac with Pedro for the week, he is not regretting the move having caught our best food week yet! Here is our menu:

• Thursday - Mahimahi prepared 2 ways with rice, Sashimi and, Garlic and Lemon infused seared pieces
• Fri - Indian Daal
• Sat - Spaghetti bolognese
• Sun - Lentil burgers with sides of wedges
• Mon - Coconut curry beans with rice, accompanied by Russian Seared Fish
• Tues - Faves aux vin a la pacifique with baked bread and mudcake
• Wed - Pacific garlic and onion soup
• Thurs - Falafels with rice
• Fri - Potato and bean curried soup
• Sat - Spaghetti bolognese

Coming to the end of Week 6, I am undertaking another stocktake of all food on board to be sure of quantities as we look ahead 5-6 weeks. Making sure that we have enough food to carry us through is important and we need to be on top of this more than ever. We have had a loss of 10kg of rice to the sea due to water inside bags and boxes, and we are now holding food in stronger bags and boxes so this doesn't happen again. Our oven is also beginning to deteriorate, so in anticipation of its complete demise we are now baking bread everyday, and saving other food for later. Signe, Rasmus and I have been taking turns on our watches to get bread baked for lunch. The smell of bread wafting through the raft in the early hours is heavenly out here. We have a few weeks left and we are keeping spirits up and bellies full as we push East to Chile!

The moon fish (Mola mola) is a large planktivore, one of the largest fish species known. It is regularly encountered in tropical waters and an attraction in ecotourism due to its colossal dimensions. However, the individual seen in the pictures measured around 70cm total length. Its relatively small size and high curiosity about the raft and the swimmers around it might be indicatives of a juvenile, immature, and careless about predators. Furthermore, a pelagic environment with temperate (as opposed to tropical) waters, like that TY is sailing on now, might be a safer location for a young to grow to maturity before it heads to its preferred adult habitat. Interestingly, the last 3 days, the Kongsberg echosounders had picked up the signal of "something" that has been sailing with the raft at around 50m. This "something" in the echogram matched the acoustic characteristics of a bony fish. Then, the mola mola could be that "something", feeding on the layer of plankton (also being studied with the echosounders) and sheltering itself with the raft. More sightings of this fellow could confirm that the Tupacs have a new type of follower and company.

One hour later the team experienced a peculiar event. The albatross that has been visiting the raft every day the last week decided to land. He (we assume it is a male) was very interested in the safety buoy. Several times he used his beak, gently touching the yellow buoy. This lasted until Erik decided to get closer to the giant bird by swimming underwater. The albatross sensed something and flied up in the air, a second before Erik popped up from the ocean.

Both animals are of the largest kind in their group. We cherished a day with giants.

The bread rolls became dinner, and served as buns for a our lentil burgers, with enough for 3 each. The cinnamon rolls following dinner were coming out of the oven warm and the cinnamon and sugar warmed your insides and you felt like a child at the bakery. We previously had all dreamed about the food comas that would be induced on return to our homes, we never thought that the same food coma could occur out here on our raft eating the same food we have been dreaming about!

Even the biggest of eaters Sergey passed on another round of cinnamon rolls, and for the last hour we have all sat around the deck like beached whales, trying to move our food babies to a more comfortable position. Rasmus was persistent though and pushed us on with 'get your Obama on 'YES WE CAN!'. But alas we couldn't finish it all, with cinnamon rolls littering the galley and more in the oven, we gave in and let our stomachs rest, with the thought that tomorrow is another day. This has been another great day in the Pacific Ocean and the Rahiti Tane crew are happier than ever.

Since we left Easter Island on a Wednesday, the week onboard starts with Wednesday. Beside being a chocolate day, it is also the day of the week when Lisa restocks jam for the breakfast porridge, and refills our "snack packs" - small bags of nuts and raisins that keeps you going on night watches and when cooking takes more time than planned. We call it shopping day.

Thursdays became cake days quite early on. It usually means that Lisa bakes a cake with the fruits available (bananas in the beginning, now replaced by lemons), or that I bake the now famous mud-cake of Dr Wikström.

Having eaten unhealthy treats for two days in a row (unless you managed not to eat all the Wednesday chocolate, which I doubt), it is time for fruit Friday as we are having fresh fruit straight from the can. Until now we have munched sliced pineapples but rumors has it that we eventually might have to put up with peaches as we make our way through the cans. Lets hope that we are close enough to Valparaiso by that time to keep the mood good anyhow.

We all look forward to Saturdays. Not only because it is the end of the longest chocolate fasting. (Or did you actually manage to keep a piece from last Wednesday? Quite impressive indeed.) But also because Saturdays are the days when our skipper Signe shows off her skills with spaghetti bolognese. A hit already from the start, the recipe has evolved a bit during the trip. How ever we ran out of onions, chick peas and minced soy "meat" the last time, and how the future incarnations of this dish will stand in the competition remains to be seen. We all rest assured that she will pull it off. If the weather allows we might also have half a glass of red chilean wine to the Italian dish.

Sundays are the latest day to get its own speciality as the intended popcorns has only been served quite infrequently. It was not until last week that we declared Sundays to be the official liquorice day, celebrating by eating Scandinavian liquorice boats (we are always keen about the maritime atmosphere onboard). It is with happy smiles that we go to bed every Sunday night, reminding each other that "tomorrow is a chocolate day". Not that anyone ever manages to forget, but in order to make the joy last even longer. So far it is only Tuesdays that remains a "normal" week day. Lets see what we can turn it into.

However, when the wind is coming from the wrong direction we sometimes have to bring down the sail in order to minimize the setback. The same when the wind is too weak to fill the sail, and the constant rocking by the waves only turns it into a annoying flapping oversized piece of swab. Those depressing days call for something extra too keep people in a good mood. As we do not have to focus on the sail and the course, we can turn to more advanced cooking and we usually go for burgers or other dishes that take more time and attention. And maybe an extra mud-cake. When not approaching Valparaiso, we can at least surrender to some comfort eating, no matter what day of the week it is. A would-be depressing day quickly becomes a happy day when we're stuffing ourselves with cinnamon rolls and lentil burgers, cakes and extra chocolate.

Not once during these eight weeks have I seen a weather forecast with favourable wind for more than 3 or 4 days. We can choose to complain about this but we can also choose to see the beauty of it. We cannot control the weather, we can only accept what we get and make the most out of it. A voyage like this cannot be planned to last for a certain amount of weeks for it is not up to us to decide.

To get to where we are now we had to first sail west. To sail directly towards South America from Easter Island isn't possible as a large high pressure system blocks the way - there is very little wind over a large area. When you can't go through the mountain and you can't go over it - you must go around it. West of Easter Island we found the winds that would take us south. The miles between 30 and 40 degrees south were so far the hardest to cover. A look at the pilot chart for the area tells us that although northerly winds are prevailing there is also a large percentage of southerly and south-easterly winds. This is exactly what we experienced and so we were blown back north several times. Our tactics have worked though and in total the route we have sailed is more or less exactly what we planned for.

After fighting our way south towards the 40s we are now no longer counting degrees of latitude and hugging each other for each one - we are now counting degrees of longitude (and hugging each other for each one). Within the next day we will be in the 90s, and our next big milestone is to get into the 80s.

We're enjoying a good near gale this happy Sunday as we passed the 2000-mile-mark. Rasmus made quinoa balls for dinner and now we're in our only slightly wet sleeping bags eating licorice - after all it is the official Rahiti licorice day. Lisa even issued extra chocolate for everyone. We're racing east and hoping to get into the 99th degree of western longitude before the winds turn against us again. All in all a good day to be a raft sailor.