still on our way to NZ lat 23* 22'S long 177* 57'W

good morning everyone,
well it has been an exciting 24 hrs!! we had a beautiful sail yesterday, nice and easy with winds between 10-14 , calm seas. spotted a pod of ( we think) sperm whales. they popped their heads up and they are very round blunt heads. shortly after that we had New Zealand Airforce buzz by between Dorothy Marie and us at a low altitude. They called us on VHF 16 to get our boat info, number on board, departed from and destination and a rough time of getting there. They called all the boats out here. We
thought that was cool! someone in NZ knows we are coming!! sure made us all feel safe. liking that NZ airforce!

We then continued on for a lovely sail when we had a strike on our fish line...... around 6:30pm yep another big one! guess what it was!! A marlin , 8ft long that makes number 3 for us and who says a sailboat can't catch them?! took lots of pictures and he was hard to bring up , but we did it. We have joined the All Points RAlly - from Tongatapu to Opua NZ and we will be entering the biggest fish caught on the crossing.

but our day does not end there..... last night we had a lightening storm all around us. We pulled in all the sails and motored as fast as we could through the narrowest part. thank god for radar. winds only got to 27knt but the lightening WOW!! not something I want to do again. the main fun all happened at 3am. we faired well as did Dorothy Marie. even went so far as to unscrew all the antennae of the radios ( ham VHF) and put the handhelds and hand held gps in the oven, just in case. but luckily
nothing happened. was kinda neat seeing the lightening bolts now that we are out of that.

NOT something I want to repeat ! hopefully that is the only one. other than that we are all doing well, sailing right now at 5.1 knts. good wind and easy seas. looking forward to being in NZ.

hugs,
Dionne