THE SOUTH PACIFIC, 4/5/07 4:40 AM 01 44S, 131 17W (Ginger)

Thursday was a big day for us. Peter went up the mast at first light - or at least as soon as I'd had a couple hours of sleep. He attached a new block at the head of the mast for the spinnaker halyard and ran the halyard up the outside of the mast. We'll re-run a halyard through the mast at anchor somewhere. We had the spinnaker set and breakfast under way as we crossed the equator at about 9:00AM local time. We changed the clocks at 130 west so we're now an hour ahead of current Seattle time.
After a shot of rum punch all around - including one for Neptune, we enjoyed breakfast and then set about the business of the day. Watches, off watches and small projects. When they talk about equatorial heat they mean it. It was a sweltering 92 degrees with very high humidity and it was a relief to have some decent wind to sit in the shade of the umbrella and cool off with a great spinnaker run all day. Peter checked into the Pacific Maritime net in the afternoon and got lots of advice from
Roger on fishing. We'd been dragging a line for the last couple of days with no takers. Roger said to drag a spoon so Peter set the rod with a spoon in addition to the hand line we'd been using. I think the spoon was the teaser and the squid was the tasty morsel that caught the attention of the wahoo. We were sitting in the cockpit about 5P when a wahoo hit our line and the rest of the evening was devoted to this fish. Neptune must like pineapple rum more than Peter does! It was a big fish
and made me wish we were headed in to anchor tomorrow as we'll have trouble eating all of it. There was another wahoo swimming with it until we pulled it in. Almost made me want to let it go, though by the time we got it aboard that wasn't an option for the fish. Anyway, fish aboard, crew exhausted we slopped around in some big waves and light wind while I checked us in to the Seafarer's net. Peter had to turn the autopilot off to keep radio interference down so he hand steered for the hour that
the net was on. After the net we fired up the engine as the motion sitting here with no wind was fairly violent. Neptune giveth (the wahoo) and the sailboat gods taketh away, an hour and a half of motoring and the alternator light came on. It's dead and the spare we have on board needs a special bracket. We're changing course for Nuku Hiva (we were going to hang out at Fatu Hiva for a week before checking in) and we'll be able to get a new one or a repair there. We have about 650 miles to go
so that should take less than a week. The forecast is for light to no wind all weekend so it may be a very slow trip. We will try to update our position via email but there will be no blog updates and no radio check in until we make landfall and get our alternator working again. Life just got a lot more basic aboard Marcy! We're going to save our power for emergency radio use and the refrigerator. We still have one tank of water so luckily we won't need to make any water this week. We shut
the engine down and have been making about 6 kts in light wind with large swell the rest of the night. The moon is out and we can see different stars in this hemisphere. We'll be sitting out here enjoying all that fantastic fish, and we'll check in next week!