February Update

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 GMT

It is difficult to believe that soon I will be celebrating the first anniversary of finishing my first Vendée Globe. There is no surer way of creating lifelong memories than racing around the world on your own, and I have many from that race that will stay with me forever, but the most poignant memory of all is that day in February when, in glorious sunshine off Les Sable d'Olonne, I crossed the line. People have often asked since “How does it feel to be alone for that length of time, and then all of a sudden to have that many people all over the boat?”. Well the answer is that it's fine, actually it's great, really! They were my family and friends and I was really very pleased to see them. For those of us at sea, time passes very quickly, but for my children it had been a very long three months. I was almost as pleased to hand over the responsibility of the boat to friends to get in alongside, and not have to worry about it for the first time in three years!

But what sticks in my mind most about that day was when someone said “Have you seen all the people?”, “What people?” I said, and then, looking up, caught sight of the sides of the canal, lined with 40 to 50,000 people. When I give talks about the race, that moment still gives me goosebumps. There was no other explanation for their presence other than to see me and the boat come back home – it was mid week, out of season in a small holiday town. I was extremely humbled by the whole experience, and continued to be so over the next two weeks as we celebrated in the bars or repaired the boat ready to return the the UK, and people would come up to us to say they had followed the race, or we showed them around the boat – we always run an “open boat” when we can because that is a good thing to do, but it does slow your work rate down in a place like Les Sable! I don't think many people expected to see the skipper grinding holes in his deck three days after the Vendée!

Pretty soon I was back in the UK, and back to reality. It was good to be home, and lovely to be able to spend time with the family – picking the boys up from school and going for bike rides with the family becomes much more special after a long time away. However, as soon as we get the next stage of the campaign up and running, we aim to move over and train in Brittany with the other skippers, which is the only way I believe to get the podium place in 2012 which is my goal – I will be back!

My wife Kim and I are working full time now looking for a partner to become involved with the next stage, which in the short term will involve the Velux 5-Oceans. Everything is going to move up a gear – we need a new boat, and even though I consider myself to be very much the beginner against the likes of Michel Desjoyeaux, I am not the beginner I once was! I learnt a lot about myself, namely that the longer the race the happier I am, which is why I love the Vendée so much, and I learnt a lot about what I liked about our boat, which even though it is old performed faultlessly, and I now therefore I have the experience to know exactly what I need in that new boat when the time comes.

I think that time won't be far away now – I am certain everything is going to fall into place for us soon with a sponsor, it feels like the whole world is beginning to breath a sigh of relief after the credit crunch, and companies are looking at ways of marketing themselves that engage people and draw them in on an emotional level – nothing does this like solo sailing with it's positive values and human stories.

Our team is waiting in the wings, all we need to do is add that elusive funding, and we'll be off! France, here we come!!

Happy New Year everyone!

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 GMT

We have been quiet over the last few months, but by no means idle. As things begin to look a little more rosy as we come out of the recession, we have been working hard on contacting potential sponsors, which appears to be going well at present, which is good, as time is passing by very quickly and the 2012 Vendée is looming ever nearer.

We have done our rounds of the boat shows; first Paris in December, then two days at the London Boatshow, Friday was for the RNLI, for whom I am now an ambassador, and the second day, the Wednesday, I was giving a talk on the main stage.

We are also now being supported by Dorset Cereals, who evidently heard of my liking for porridge, and Brittany Ferries who are really helping with my continual travelling I am doing back and forth across the Channel for various things – I am out there again on Tuesday in Vannes to meet with Pascal Conq, one of the boats designers, to discuss optimisation of our existing boat for the upcoming Velux 5-Oceans.

Thanks for your support – watch this space, this is going to be a good year for us, I can feel it!

Memories....and thanks.

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 GMT

BLOG 21-04_09
It is strange to be writing a blog from the comfort of my own dining room with the dogs at my feet, rather than hanging on for grim death on the boat, or even just sitting at an angle. Somehow the Vendee Globe now seems a lifetime away; it passed very quickly at the time, and life has continued to hurtle by at an alarming pace since the finish.
Of all the memories that remain of the race, I think the most poignant is not a sailing one but a human one; the finish and our return up the canal in Les Sable, which was watched by forty to fifty thousand people so they say. I was totally blown away by the whole thing, it was unlike anything I have ever experienced before - people on the water, people lining the sides of the canal and the balconies of the apartments behind them. I found it difficult to believe that they had all come to see me in, and try as I might to think of another reason for their presence, that was evidently what they were there for. It started from sixteen miles out, when the local lifeboat came out to meet me with the guys on board from the Port de Commerce who had helped to lift the boat out before the start. By the time we were a couple of miles from the finish there were dozens of boats, big and small completely surrounding us, then it was over the line, friends, family and journalists on board, and finally, after one hundred and nine days I handed over the responsibility of the boat to Marco from the V1D2 boatyard in France……then someone said, “Look at the people in the canal!” I feel very humbled and honoured that all those people had turned out, and particularly to those people on the various ferries who had paid their fares to come out and see me rather than as with other campaigns where they were full of corporate guests, hired by sponsors; and also to Luca and Frank who RIBbed my family and friends out to the finish line free of charge, because by this stage we had no money left.
Lots of things have changed since I got back. I am starting to get a handle on how much media was generated; people we don’t know are being very kind to us and very complimentary, and I am still slightly embarrassed by this and slightly unsure as to how to deal with it. It is bizarre, you go sailing for a while and when you get back everyone treats you very differently.
I am very aware that many people have written to Kim and I, both directly and through the Vendeé Globe website. We have all of those e-mails now, and will continue responding to everyone over the coming months - be patient with us, there’s only us two and hundreds of e-mails! Likewise, for those that have asked for posters we are on the case too! Thank you all so much for your support.
We had a great party at the Royal Dorset Yacht Club when Robin Knox-Johnston, Simon Kearsley and my son Jason and I bought the boat home to Weymouth on the 9th, and I was given an Honorary Membership of the club, who then did us proud with a great spread of food and made everyone feel welcome! I would like to thank the Commodore Gareth Peasdon and his team for their hospitality and the membership - I’ve never been a member of a club before!
We are just about ready to begin approaching potential sponsors again now; by the end of the week our budgets and proposal will be in order and we can get moving towards the next Vendeé Globe in 2012, and the Velux 5-Oceans in 2010 / 2011, plus all the other great Trans-Atlantic Races, Fastnets and Round Britain Races between now and 2013.

Blog 26

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 GMT

We are officially out of flying fish territory now, and the last occupants who had somewhat outstayed their welcome under the staysail deckbag have now been evicted! It is a bit of a relief actually; although they are a real triumph of the creature creation department, to be throwing them back many times per night when I should be sleeping is an activity that will not be missed. Even though they have mastery of two elements, someone forgot to install brains, which was a shame, but I reckon one had a crash helmet to protect what little brain it had - there is a small head shaped dent in the cockpit side which was not there before. At fourteen inches long for a big flying fish it is possible........

It is gradually getting cooler, and I have broken out socks and boots for the night time, and for the first time today, during the day as well. It's nice that it is a bit cooler, we just need some wind to go with it now. At night all the stars look familiar again, and if I look behind me, almost due south, the star that flashes red, white and green is clearly visible a hands width above the horizon - if you don't believe me, find a dark place where there's no light pollution on a clear night and have a look, it is there flashing away!

I had a bit of a nightmare morning. After being up and down all night with fairly mild squalls, trimming to try to keep sailing deep to get north, (or that was how it started, with a course of twenty degrees, but before dawn my course was seventy degrees - straight back at the Azores again!) so I thought I'd get some weather and then gybe, but my e-mails had gone down; they would send but not receive, which meant no weather information which would have been a real disaster. I had a ship coming straight at me at twenty knots who was not answering his VHF and I would not have shown up on his radar in the torrential rain, plus I was sitting waiting for a call from the press that just didn’t happen. At that point I suddenly noticed we were going slow, and switched on the deck light to see my lovely new Toe in the Water spinnaker hanging against the windows having ripped from top to bottom. I think the rip stemmed from a small repair I had done in haste which may have washed off with all the rain but I didn't have time to inspect it, I just needed to get it down whilst I had all the bits. If you aren't quick about it they can go in the water, under the boat and round the keel or wrap around the rig, so I got it down and rapidly away below. Plus I couldn't gybe out of the way of the ship with that still up there, and he was by now at four miles with me only doing six knots. I called him again, luckily he answered, altered slightly and went round me. I haven't a clue what the bloke said, he was very foreign and sounded like he smoked a million fags a day, but at least he didn't squash me, so that was fine. Everything always happens at once!

I was upset about my spinnaker. I've blown a few up on this boat because I've had so many old ones, some came with the boat but the rest were donated by Dee and Alex. Normally you really know about it when they go; one minute you're barrelling along, then there's a bang and the boat pops up and you slow down, to the accompaniment of a noise like a roll of tissue paper rustling in the wind as the bits blow around like streamers. Now all I have left is an old Group 4 one left that Dee gave me. It's got to be nearly ten years old, and while it's not pretty it is built like a brick outhouse and will do the job - let's hope it's not a spinnaker finish or they won't know who I am!

With Dee safely in we have, she promises, seen the last of her jokes. Some will say that mine were worse I'm sure, but they all gave us something to have a groan about! It is, however, pretty odd to have everyone else tied up whilst I'm still out here, but if the Azores Highs (multiple) stop messing about and let me through it won't be long and I'll be in too. I had a really strong feeling that I should have followed Marc Guillemot's track when I was at the point where I could have, but everything looked good for an easy crossing back then. Now I am older and wiser in the ways of the Azores High, the next time I shall listen to my little voices and never going near the Azores again. Ever. If the Vendee Globe was twice around then that would be fine so it's not the mileage, but psychologically when you get near the finish, that and all it entails becomes the focus and you become ready to and then really want to get in, and so to be messed around by the weather at the eleventh hour is always going to be hard. Give me a good honest low pressure any day.......

I've been thinking a lot about canting keels too, and the designs for the new boat. It's funny how you can throw a battery on any thirty year old JCB that has been sitting in a field and it will fire up and the bucket will go up and down without any trouble. Put that in a boat and it all seems to fall apart however, it should all work fine but never seems to....so soon hopefully I'll be on e-bay looking for a second hand digger to cannibalise for my canting keel hydraulics!

Blog 25

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 GMT

The boat regularly looks like a fishmongers at the moment - no matter how many times I get up in the night to throw flying fish back as they flail around on deck making a noise like small pneumatic drills and waking me up, in the morning there are always some that I haven't heard land who have not fared so well, which is quite sad. I took fifteen out of the boom bag yesterday, which is above head height, so they must be reaching quite an altitude to get up there! I found tem as I was putting a reef in yesterday - the first reef one since the Falklands, which is incredible I think; that would be like driving across America without changing gear! I was beginning to think I was getting weak for a second, then I realised that the mast winch had seized solid! It is really exposed to the salt up forward where it is, and when I eventually levered the drum off all of the grease had mixed with the salt and become like green concrete, baked dry in the heat and solid through lack of use. I had to do a quick bear away to level the boat off so I didn't loose any bits, then stripped and cleaned the bits in the sink with the washing up scrubby sponge and some fresh water (I can't spare the diesel, I am really low!), dried them off, gave them a quick squirt of WD 40 and grease and slapped it back together, good as new! By the time I had finished mucking about I didn't need the reef after all it turned out, but at least it was easier taking it out with a winch that actually now goes round freely.

The mysterious birds that had previously left calling cards on the deck came back and made a mess all over the sails this time, which I hope will wash off before I get in, but I did catch them in the act, and got some video too whilst dodging their missiles! They were boobys I think - like slim-line gannets but with bright blue beaks and blue around their eyes. They were hunting flying fish with some real zest, but not a great deal of luck; I didn't see them catch one, despite them going into some serious dives and watching for hours. They obviously do get lucky, the results are all over my nice white sails!

Now, as I am seriously into my Michele Thomas learn French course, spending a few hours a day on it sometimes, I am aware of actually how much time I spend trimming and watching the numbers - boat speed, wind speed, course and so on. There are constant small changes in the sea state and wind that require a trip up on deck to adjust sails and the pilot which make it difficult to concentrate properly on my schoolwork, but I am getting there slowly......

I can tell the race is nearly over, I have come to the end of the pre-bagged porridge and this morning I have started on the sacks! If Kim has an obsession it is only with plastic bags - any plastic bag anywhere with anything at all in it must be knotted, but not just an ordinary knot, it must be so tight that it reaches the density of the centre of the sun, and consequently they take quite a time to get undone - my average boatspeed should go up now, because I don't have to undo them every morning and I have all that extra time to spend on keeping the boat going!

I have been trying to work out when I'll get in, and it seems to be dependant on the Azores High - I think I will be following Marc around the outside of it, and it looks at the moment, touch wood, that we should get around it without stopping, but the high and the waypoint I have imaginatively named "Where everyone else went" are still just under three days away, which is a long time in weather terms, particularly when things are as fickle as they have been, plus we will arrive there on Friday the thirteenth which could throw the whole thing into chaos, but I am hoping I will be in late on the 21st, or the 22nd which is more likely, but I am pulling out all the stops at the moment and we'll see.

Blog 24

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 GMT

This bit of the ocean is to all appearances as close to a desert as I would ever have thought it was possible to get. I don't think I have ever sailed so far or for so long with the same sails up. The days are the same; the sunrises and sunsets are seemingly instant - they and very brightly coloured but only ever for a very few minutes; the afternoon squall clouds disappear after sundown to be replaced with the most staggering display from the stars which stretch uninterrupted from a finger above the horizon in all directions, the Milky Way visible clearly and the occasional shooting star topping off a spectacle that you can enjoy for hours whilst sitting in the cockpit in the warm, steady night time breeze, even in the early hours. When the sun comes up the heat is switched back on instantly and it becomes an oven on deck and a sweatbox downstairs, making it difficult to eat or sleep. Then, after lunch the squalls develop and keep you occupied until dark - and so passes each day.

Other than the bird I saw a few days ago there have been no others, but I awoke yesterday morning to find a great many calling cards all over the deck which are now burnt on by the sun! I obviously had some company during the night from someone who was flying above and to windward of the boat and probably looking for flying fish. As I emerged from downstairs after dark last night and stood up by the hatch I was hit in the chest by something. I looked down and it was a little flying fish about two inches long - if you bear in mind he must have been over two and a half metres above the water to clear the topsides of the boat as we were quite well heeled over, that was not a bad feat for a little creature! I threw launched him over the side and he spread his fins and flew a short way before disappearing.

There is, I expect, a lot going on that I don't see - sometimes the water boils as something or things that eat flying fish corral them near the surface and create a mass flypast. It is interesting to watch a large number all fly at once, some fly until they are almost out of sight, perhaps quarter of a mile, and others not so far. I thought to start with that natural selection must favour those that fly furthest, but then if you think about it they are a long way away from what was chasing them that is true, but they plop back into the water and .......no mates! They are alone, which must be a bit disconcerting for a creature who's best chance is in a school. That would make an interesting study to occupy a lifetime for some bearded biologist, are long, short or average distance fliers most favoured by natural selection?

Talking of beards, I got rid of mine again yesterday, and in doing so looked in the mirror which is an unusual event for me either here or at home - I look like a real muppet as I am badly in need of a haircut!. It is curling behind my ears like some bad 1980's footballer and the top blows in my eyes too, something it hasn't been long enough to do for over ten years, but I am forbidden by Kim from doing another DIY haircut after the last one, or I would get rid of the lot - it is pretty hot under here, but not through brain activity! I am under strict instructions to wear a hat upon my arrival!

I have finally run out of gas, so the bodged in gas stove has been replaced by my old faithful alcohol stove which takes ages to boil or cook anything, but makes the place smell homely, somewhat like the meths burning Mamod traction engine I had as a boy that my boys now play with, so I am happy about that.

There are lots of fishermen around here too, all heading east away from Brazil and gabbling constantly on channel 16 on the VHF - if there was an emergency you'd never get a word in edgeways! Talking to Brian I think they are after tuna, which they catch with simple rods with a fixed line on the end that stick out of rod holders all down he sides of the boat. I have seen them often off the coast of Portugal, usually doing nothing, but I did see one once that had got lucky; as the ship lay a-hull they were pulling in big tuna one after another, some of them nearly four feet long! There are evidently enough of some sort of creature out here to keep a lot of fishermen busy anyway. Their boats are interesting - no AIS* even though some are quite large, and they are always appalling radar targets, often they have to be within four miles before my radar alarm goes off. The first one I saw was on a converging course with me - he showed up at under four miles on the radar on a collision course doing about ten knots and I couldn't see his port or starboard lights. I called him by VHF and he altered for me instantly but without answering, and as he passed about half a mile away down my port side I could see he had no navigation lights, only running lights, and after three miles I couldn't see his lights or see him properly on the radar and I wondered if he was smuggling something. There are loads of vessels to be bought from the Customs auction in Gibralter that have been confiscated for smuggling, there are two that I know of in Weymouth alone so it must be common, but we shall never know. Also, Santos is a place they warn you about because of piracy, so all in all I am glad to finally in the eleventh hour get the South East Trades this morning for the run up to the Equator and to be leaving Brazil behind me.

I am still battling with Michele Thomas in preparation for the glorious day when I make a fool of myself in two languages during my Radio Vacation with Andy from the Race Media Centre, but my deck speakers have blown up due to excessive Bob Marley (It keeps the whales away!), so now I have to learn downstairs as I boil - brilliant!! I wish I had kept my mouth shut! By the end of the trip I'll be fluent, but only once the ambient temperature reaches more than 45 degrees........



*AIS - Automatic Identification System - mandatory for all vessels over 300 tons but a brilliant idea for anyone going to see in a vessel of any size, it transmits your name, callsign and course, speed and position plus cargo if you have one to any other similarly equipped vessel that is within VHF range - sometimes nearly forty miles for digital information. No longer when you are about to be squashed do you call "Big black ship on my bow that is about to run me down....!, it is now "Such and such a vessel in position so and so, course x, this is yacht on your bow...." they can't ignore you when called by name and if they do you know who they are; it has saved my bacon a few times as you also show up independently of your radar target which may be poor for a yacht.

Blog 23

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 GMT

If you went on holiday and the weather was like it has been here over the past few days you would not be disappointed - it has been glorious. The water is just the right temperature for bathing babies, the sun is very strong and right overhead at midday, and the breeze is warm and pleasant at night when you go out to look at the stars. I think this must be where the baby flying fish live - I have not seen any that are bigger than half grown but there are hundreds of them. Birds are a different matter - just one for an hour only as he flew just ahead of the boat looking for flying fish with his beady eye; he was greeny brown with a pointy tail and beak like a needle and about three quarters the size of a gannett. Since then, nothing, no visible company at all.

I have been busy however. The generator needed fiddling with again because as the water and hence the batteries get warmer the way they charge changes, and if you're not careful the generator is overcharging like mad and my nice rectangular batteries are about to become cooked into shapes like egg boxes! A blocked fuel filter was complicating the process of setting it up; I must have had a really dirty fill of fuel from somewhere, but it's OK now. I changed generator engine oil and stopped the water leak from the engine exhaust, so we are a bit drier downstairs now which is a good thing.

It is difficult to sleep at the moment - you can only really turn in a couple of hours after dark as it has just about cooled off enough by then, and as all the hatches are open I get a bit of breeze over the top of my bunk coming through the companionway bulkhead hatch from the back of the boat. It is not easy to eat normally either - I have my porridge and a cup of tea just after first light when it's still cool, but I am really short of cold things to eat - it's hard to summon up the enthusiasm for two hundred and fifty grams of pasta and sauce when it's this hot! However, I'm hardly burning three thousand calories a day or whatever it's supposed to be just moving around and keeping warm like you do in the Southern Ocean!

It is strange to think about my position in the race at the moment. I have to be careful what I say as I haven't finished yet, but if you'd have told me before the start that I'd be in eighth place at any point I'd have said it you were mad - it is more than ten places better than my wildest dreams! I think it is a reflection on how strong and simple the boat is as much as anything though. It is really sad about Bilou after he came to within a stones throw of the finish and had to stop, but he did the right thing and he'll be back in 2012 I'm sure.

Personally I don't feel any different after my adventures but I am looking forward to getting home now and wearing my slippers by the fire, walking the dogs, bike riding with the kids, and getting set up for the future with renewed energy after my adventures, it's just that the South Atlantic doesn't want to release us without a fight.........still, four days to the North East Trades, steady sailing and the last ocean to cross! Keep your fingers crossed for an easy crossing of the Doldrums for us.

Blog 22

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 GMT

It is eerily quiet on the boat as I write. It is never silent at sea, there is always the wind, the waves lapping and the buzz of the autopilot, but now, when the pilot stops for a few seconds or if you stand at the front where you are too far away to hear it there is only deafening silence..........there is not even any swell to slat the sails back and forth. The sea is like glass, and the sun is so bright you can't look to the horizon because of the glare.

These conditions are not conducive to happy sailing, particularly if you are racing, but if you take the time to look a whole other world opens up. The water is the most indescribable blue with the sun directly overhead, and it illuminates the top few metres very well. If you look over the side you can see millions of small creatures, mainly simple animals, worms and creatures like free swimming (or drifting!) coral polyps, with bodies about an inch long and then inch long tentacles. They pass by in their millions, and at night when the stars are out in all their glory as we near the equator, they put on their own lightshow to match. If the boat is stopped, they just flash all around you, and if you are moving, they flash furiously as they are churned up by the wake.

When it is as flat as it is now, you also become aware of all the jellyfish that are around - hundreds of them, mainly small Portugese Man-O-War, but other kinds with small sails too, which puts me off swimming I can tell you! Today though I had a treat, as we trundled along at about two knots, I looked up and saw something floating which I first thought was a wooden box, then I thought it was a dead animal, but it turned out to be a turtle! It was very near the boat, about as big as a dustbin lid, with a beard of red slimy looking weed around its shell. The top of its shell was clear of weed however, and brown but whitened with salt as it basked in the sun, raising its flippers out of the water to warm them too. It raised it's head to look at us as we went by, and then was gone. Magic!

When I looked over the back of the boat earlier when we were actually moving, I saw what I thought was some fishing line around one of the rudders, and not wanting it to leave it there to finish up killing some poor creature I grabbed the boathook and fished it off to put it in the bin, but it wouldn't come free - it was very strong. When it did come and I dragged it aboard it turned out not to be fishing line, but the tentacle of a Portugese Man-O-War, about five feet long! I threw it back and hurriedly washed my hands!

I have these two slightly potty birds as well; they fly infront of the boat for about quarter of a mile, land near each other and wait. As the boat goes past, they either move out of the way if they are about to get run down, or just watch it go past. When they are a quarter of mile behind they repeat the procedure, and have been doing so since yesterday. They are fairly sizeable, brown with back eyes and beaks, but white markings on their heads which look like glasses frames! They don't want my leftover porridge scrapings, so I don't know what they are playing at, but we are all quite used to each other now, and I can get within two feet of them!

I have been doing lots of mending the boat and a bit of washing of things (much to Kim's amusement) and myself, so I am all ready now for the next step and onto the Doldrums proper. Tonight the wind should fill in I hope and we'll be off - wish me luck! Oh maybe this is it now, we're moving............

VG Blog 21

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 GMT

Our rounding of the Horn was done rather appropriately in forty to fifty knots of breeze and large steep seas which were very close together. I gybed and completely rounded up, the first one of the entire race, as I came on to the shelf. The wind had increased and the seas were very short, crossed and now breaking, and I wouldn't have wanted to go around in too much more wind than that I can tell you - there was quite a bit of current too, nearly a couple of knots at times to add to the entertainment by further worsening the sea state. I finished up going around with three reefs and staysail because it was easier on the pilot, and there was less strain on deck gear from the staysail as it collapsed and filled as the boat was slewed around by the waves. I remember being on deck and watching the bow trying to force it's way through the wave in front, and a wave behind just curling and trying to break into the cockpit behind, that's how short some of them were! The island of Cape Horn actually became a lea shore as I got closer, so I had to gybe out and finished up so far offshore that I thought I was not going to see it as the visibility was so bad! I did in the end get some shots and some video of it through the murk, but I'm not sure how well they turned out, I'll have to wait and see. Cape Horn was just a mark of the course to me up until that point, but when I was actually there I felt it did represent a lot more than that for us - it was the culmination of ten years of hard work to get here, the end of the Southern Ocean which had spared us, and the start of the last leg home. In many ways to have gone around in less wind would have left me feeling cheated, it was a proper rounding and I had my moneys worth. As soon as I was around I had dolphins, black and white ones of a kind that I don't remember seeing before, which really was the crowning glory of a fairly emotional moment and a time for a huge sigh of relief.

After the Horn it was straight on to Staten Island, which rises up almost vertically out of the sea giving one of the most spectacular coastlines that I have ever seen. With its peaks shrouded in mist most of the time it was like something out of Boy's Own, little sheltered inlets and coves all probably with deep water and dying to be explored. Under any other circumstances wild horses could not have kept me away and I'd have gone ashore to wander around, and I imagined it would feel like I was the first person ever to have set foot there, that's what kind of place it was. All of the points, bays and other landmarks were obviously named for the most part by the sailors of many different nationalities who first went there. When you pass a place like that you can see what the attraction to people like Bill Tillman was and is, there are so many empty lonely places where nobody goes just crying out to be explored. I was called up by the Argentinian Navy who popped out from behind the island. They were desperate to do something, anything to help! They spoke very good English and French, and were really polite, and the first voices I had heard over the VHF since passing Madeira on the way down. I didn't have the heart to tell them that if they helped me I would be disqualified! I should have asked them who’s permission I needed to ask if I wanted to go ashore.

We were quickly flushed onwards around to the Falklands by the current. Yet more shelving, and quite a lot of breeze, once again thirty to forty knots as we approached. The outlying Islands were on the wrong place on the electronic charts which lead to a few anxious moments, and as they are for the most part are fairly low lying, they didn't show up that well on the radar either. Partly out of curiosity, and partly because there was so much wind I thought I'd be safe, I finished up too close to Stanley and the weather changed suddenly, left me in the lea of the island and pretty well parked up for hours in a large swell that meant I couldn't keep the sails in shape. It was really frustrating, and I cursed myself for coming within twenty miles, let alone eight! It did give me chance, however, to have a look at a place which has fascinated me since it was in the news when I was small, and it was really strange to ponder then whys and where-for’s of what had happened there whilst actually looking at the place for real. The dolphins came back, the same type as before, playing around the boat - I got some good video of them for once, and the birds changed too. There were lots of albatross still, but even more skuas, big brown birds that are the equivelant of hyenas, with short wings, powerful bodies and a beak which looks like it could open tins! I did see two of them mobbing an albatross. There were also very strange brown and white birds that I thought were ducks to start with, but once they were air-bourne, which looked like a struggle, they were obviously some sort of cormorant. Flying really was not natural for them, and they were made to look worse after watching the albatross for so long, their short wings going ten to the dozen, little fat bodies that looked like stuffed toys, and a head that stayed perfectly level and motionless despite everything else flapping like mad! As I watched, I suddenly heard a deafening noise; two fighters went overhead at full bore seemingly a hundred feet above the mast. I thought the end of the world had come and gone! It was the first man made sound I had heard since the ninth of November, and having been used only to the noise of wind and water it was a real shock! I was pretty tired by that point too - a combination of relief at getting out of the South in one piece, rounding the Horn and the close proximity of land and the constant work on deck required by light winds had meant I had very little sleep for a few days.

I gradually broke free of the Falklands; the kelp which I had caught around the keel and refused to come off despite repeatedly going into reverse, decided just to fall off and we were gone, and we have been upwind on the same tack ever since, but now the sun is shining, the water is warm and it is shorts weather on deck once more. I even had a flying fish on deck last night. Just wish me luck as I negotiate the high pressure in-front of me over the next twenty four hours and hope I don't park up again........

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 GMT

I am sitting here "clock watching", or watching the time to the waypoint on the electronic chart to be more accurate - not something I ever do when at sea except for when I'm doing corporate sailing days and your timing has to be perfect. Ninety four miles to the Horn.

The sea state here is pretty grim, it's like giant version of Portland Race - the depth goes from over four thousand metres to two hundred in around thirty miles, but just a bit further round the shelf it is even steeper and makes the same transition in twelve miles - that would be quite a hill if it was on dry land! All the un-interupted might of the Southern Ocean, its winds and current, banks up here and gives an odd "heaped" sea state. The poor old pilot is working overtime as the boat gets screwed around by the waves, (I just had one break in the cockpit!) and the wind is gusting from twenty two to thirty four knots, with shifts in the gusts. On top of it all, seawater has just got into the pilot remote controls on the tillers, making the autopilot continually change course of it's own accord, only in one degree increments, but pretty rapidly, which is really very alarming! Every time I turned around it was trying to gybe - I got to a true wind angle 179 degrees at one point! I had to head up, rush through the boat into the lazerette, open the junction box, cut the wires one at a time to the remotes, and get back to the pilot controls to change course again! Hectic! Luckily I knew what it was straight away as it has happened before, but it still made me nervous - you don't need pilot problems here I can tell you. I was still pretty wired when the BBC called for an interview ten minutes later, I had to phone back and explain myself afterwards, I was talking pretty quickly like some sort of gabbling cartoon character and still nervously watching the pilot!

Last time I wrote I thought I was in the clear and on the last lap, but there were a couple of what I hope will be the final twists before I round Cape Horn at about 2100 GMT tonight; the first was when I looked up out of my window at first light and saw the rig twisting. Normally this is because when you go downwind with the sails eased too far they can push on the spreaders which is a bad thing, but I don't sail like that, and when I saw some really funny saggy creases in the main as well then I knew I had a problem. I dashed out on deck to look and the main was not attached to the track at the top, the top car, the headboard car, had broken! I got the main down in a hurry because once one car goes, they can all go like a broken zip. There are fifteen cars that run up and down the track on the back of the mast which the mainsail goes up and down on. Each car has sixty to eighty little plastic ball bearings in to help it run smoothly, but the headboard cars remained jammed on the track up at the top spreaders. The sea state was really chaotic, and it was actually difficult to stand up on deck with no main to steady the boat, so after some deliberation I decided a mast climb could wait until after Cape Horn and flat water. I tried to rig up various things to snag the cars from on deck but they are designed to be smooth and snag free, so that wasn't going to happen, so then I pulled another car up on the halliard and tried to tap them and see if they would come down - all that happened was I sent them further up the mast, above the top spreader and into the real "No-mans Land" where it is difficult to climb because there's nothing to hold on to. I was pretty despairing at that point....then I had some inspiration! After trying to get them down all day, why didn't I just send them up out of the way? There is spare track at the top, so that's what I did, and there they will stay. There is no damage to the track itself luckily, I think the cars had got distorted and pinched the balls onto the track tightly enough to stop gravity doing its thing! I spent the rest of the night taking the main off, taking all the cars off, and putting two new cars on at the top for the headboard, and putting them all back on again. The boat was rolling like a pig, and no matter how careful I was there were balls everywhere - it was a bit like one of those games you used to get at Christmas where you have to get several balls into several holes all at once!

Then I found that the aluminium plate which forms the bottom bearing of the gooseneck had broken free where it is welded to the mast base, so I had to winch and beat that back into place and bolt it through the deck (drilling through 10mm of aluminium and 15mm of solid carbon with a blunt drill from underneath with the boat rolling was not easy!) but by 0600 we were up and running with two reefs in again, and I went to bed! I was pretty tired by then because I had been up a lot of the previous night after having to jump start the engine from the domestic batteries to charge the flat engine and generator start battery, so I could then start the generator! The generator was not charging the start battery because an important component had not been wired up, but first I had to fault find, and there was no mention of this part in the manual. Only occasional use of the engine to pump water ballast had been keeping the shared start battery charged!

To top it all, I had a really bad stomach -
there's a funny story in that though; when I bought the boat, the watermaker had been left with seawater in it, and they are supposed to be stored with a biocide and cleaner to keep them in good condition. I thought after two years it would be a bin job, but Jim MacDonald from Mactra said it would be fine, just run it! Phew, what a smell! Rotten eggs!! I bought it a new membrane, and bought a brand new watermaker as a spare and thought that would see me round the world. Twenty four hours before the start, the watermaker was untouched. When Chris Ross who owns SpecDepot, one of our sponsors, came on board our conversation went something like, "Hi, I'm Chris, what can I do to help?" "Ah" said I, "What do you know about watermakers? This membrane needs to go in here somehow...." and the rest is history. He sorted it, I got a working watermaker but some very unclean pipes! I was bad all the way down the Atlantic until I finally told Kim - she said "Are you boiling your water?" - I told her I didn't need to as watermaker water was pure.... as soon as started drinking boiled water I was fine of course. A mass sterilisation ensued, and several billion algea and bacteria were evicted - they came out in lumps, yuck, but I must have missed one, just one, and an a-sexual one too unfortunately, so I am back on boiled water again but feeling fine!

Blog 19

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 GMT

I have just spent the longest time just gazing out of my door looking at all that is around me. It won't be long now and the Southern Ocean will be behind me, for a while at least, and I shall really miss it, it has been fantastic - bleak, desolate, isolated, powerful, all of those things, but immeasurably beautiful too, with undoubtably the best sailing in the world. As I looked out there were three albatross - two older ones and a spotty brown young one - they are quite sweat really, he was flying round and round the boat, obviously curious and practising his slow flying at the same time. He was doing well, but hobby horsing slightly on the really slow bits where as the adults just fly like they were on rails!

I am ready to leave the South though now; firstly before I break anything else more serious than the loo seat and the kettle handle, both casualties of the last blow, and secondly because then it will be nearer the time when I can come back better prepared and more knowledgable, and as much as I love my old boat, I would like to return in a faster one and keep up with the front runners. As such my thoughts are turning in earnest to looking for a sponsor to take us through to the 2012 Vendee Globe. It will be strange indeed to get back on that treadmill, but I think things will be different for us after this, and people will take us a bit more seriously. I always thought that I would want to do 2012 as well, but now I have experienced most of this race, I know I want to, and there is a big difference.

First, however, I have to get home, and whilst I am undoubtably a dreamer, I am very much in the here and now as the boat picks its way through a funny old sea state and gusty winds that seem to be getting worse rather than better as we get nearer the Horn. I was watching the waves earlier too, the main swell is from the south west, left over from that last blow, and the wind sea on top is from the west, which is where our wind is from at the moment. The result is a sea state something akin to a bath that has a brick dropped in the middle of it - it is very messy! The boat doesn't like it either, no sooner does it start to surf than it gets stopped by an odd wave or the breeze dies. You always seem to get funny weather in the vacuum left by a big blow, but it will stabilise eventually. The breeze has constantly been ranging between fifteen and thirty five knots under some enormous cumulus clouds, which makes sail choices difficult, but we are moving, and I am grateful for that, and we have only two days to go to Cape Horn. The blow we had did us some favours though, it was good fast sailing, downwind and then reaching in strong conditions with a good sea state, and the most wind we saw was about forty eight knots, so not bad at all really and certainly not as bad as forecast, so we made some good time. We were much more fortunate than Dee, Cali and Brian who got hammered at the Horn by the same system which had really wound itself up by that point - not nice, but they are OK as far as I'm aware, which is the main thing.

After the worst of the weather had passed us by and I had just written an e-mail to Dee to that effect, I was drying out my swamp downstairs, bucket and sponge in hand, when there was a big hissing noise, then a thump, and the boat fell over. It seemed for the longest time like water just poured and poured over the boat, shutting out the light, but in reality it probably only lasted a few seconds. I banged my cheekbone on something trying to hold onto a half full bucket of grubby bilge water! I remember thinking "Well that'll teach you to speak too soon!" I don't know if I have a bruise, the only mirror I have is just about good enough to check I haven't chopped my ears off whilst shaving! (Kim was horrified because I asked her to bring some shaving oil to Les Sable when she comes out to the finish as I ran out ages ago, and when I told her I was using cooking oil instead she was horrified! She says she doesn't want me coming home smelling, but the thing is, when I've had a shave I smell like tortellini, and that makes me hungry!) When I went outside all of my normally neatly bagged bits of string were streaming out behind the boat! Luckily the storm staysail in it's bag in the cockpit was tied on! There was no sign of my big wave, it had just blended into the scenery and gone. I was glad I hadn't been on deck.....

For the first time I am aware of how cold it is here. The sun is warm during the day when you see it, but it is cold when you can't see it and bitter at night, and the water, well, that is pretty raw I can tell you! When I wash up in seawater it is very cold, and my fresh water, sitting in a jerry can next to the hull is a bit parky too - it makes my face washing even more brief than usual, but it does wake you up pretty quick! A session on deck makes my hands red, they don't feel the cold but just change colour, and you can easily see why there is ice about, the ropes feel like icicles. There are some icebergs around the Horn, but I am more worried about Reid Stowe, the American "artist" who is spending a thousand days at sea in a ferro cement schooner, and who was last reported somewhere on the track I will take and that everyone before me has taken, so I will have to keep an eye open for him shortly, I think we'd come off worse if we hit him!

I have just done a tour of the deck before dark, in which time the breeze has gone from nineteen to thirty six knots, and back down to twenty three, but the sea state has magically sorted itself out, and we are now moving smoothly and easily! Supper time now - soup and bread, freeze dried pasta and veg, then a pint of instant custard and fresh fruit in a sachet! Excellent!!

Inside Toe In The Water

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 GMT

My boat is pretty untidy at the moment! After I had finished the repairs here was some mast climbing to do, so there are still a few things out of place.

Basically, I live in the bit between the mast bulkhead and the companionway bulkhead, so a space of about four meters long by over four and a half wide at deck level - the ballast tanks down each side make it quite narrow. In the middle, where I am sitting now is the nav station which faces forward, on a sort of "vee" bunk / seat across the boat. It is too short to stretch out on fully and has no sides, so it is difficult to sleep soundly here because you don't feel secure, but it is therefore ideal for catnaps! When you are typing your feet sit above the main alternator and ballast pump which are driven off the main engine, which is boxed in underneath the seat, along with the watermaker. At the chart table I have a stuck down mouse with a ball in the top - you spin the ball rather than moving the mouse - much easier when the boat is bouncing around. The camera charger and my i-pod sit in an ice cream container glued down with sikaflex. I still have my Christmas CD and a Patty Griffin CD which were both presents, and my elephant pencil case Kim bought me when I did my RYA Day Skipper in 1996!

Another thing which has never left the chart table is my stereo manual, every day I learn something else about it, it is so complicated!

If I spin around and face the other way, so I'm facing aft looking out of the hatch but still on the seat, I have the sink on the port side and the stove on starboard. Next to the stove, right by the door is a deep locker with my camera, nurofen, instant energy things from MX3, nail clippers and a torch, kitchen roll etc all ready for immediate use. Below the stove is a draw of sailory type things - needles and palm, tape, almanac, batteries, mini socket set, passport, binoculars and other stuff like that. Below the sink are my pots and pans and the orange plastic salad servers that I keep taking off the boat and which somehow keep getting back on!

My oilskins hang on hooks on the companionway bulkhead on both sides of the hatch, next to the handles for opening and closing the ballast valves. There is a bunk on each side of the boat; you sleep with your head by the companionway bulkhead so you can see the instruments, and your feet go forward and stop level with the chart table. I sleep on the low side and stack my spares on the high side, that way the weight distribution is good, and I don't fall out of bed when the boat heels suddenly. That would be a bad thing as the floor is wet all the time - I have many leaks! I have an Ocean Sleepware sleeping bag too, which has a waterproof breathable outer layer and two fleece inner layers, and is warm and dry enough to sleep on deck - never go sailing without one! Under each bunk are bags for stowing gear - everything from the spare laptops to my big socket set and Christmas presents.

I have some art too; on the ceiling is a mural by Didier Becet which is fantastic! It shows penguins, gulls and flying fish, big ones in the centre and smaller ones all around the edges in little groups wearing sou'westers and other things, some dancing, some "chilling out", and the flying fish have fantastic expressions - some human and some are definitely pure flying fish - they do have expressions believe it or not! I like it best because you see something different every time you look. Also there are little drawings of bats in strategic places - my nickname is Bat, and Kim draws them here and there so that I remember she loves me - very important!

Infront of the chart table are nearly 600 litres of diesel three in fixed tanks, the internal structure of the keel with the generator on top, the batteries, and the best bit - the loo! Luxury!!

* Sorry, no photos yet, I haven't been able to get the fleet to log on for several days.

Blog 18

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 GMT

It was a great start to the day - a bit of steady breeze at last, all six knots of it! Six knots of breeze, six knots of boat-speed on a reach. I cannot describe to you what a pleasure it was to hear the hiss of the water going past the hull again as I lay in bed, it seemed an age since I had heard it last. At least the calm conditions have given me chance to complete the repairs; the gooseneck is now well and truly held in place with a fairly serious piece of composite engineering that has been christened "The Eigion Beam", after Patrick the rigger's company (it was Patrick's idea!) and some fairly serious dyneema lashing wound bar tight with a couple of Spanish windlasses below decks to two strong points on the keel. All the nasty cracking noises have stopped now, and I have a great deal of confidence in the repair. The generator is lashed down to some carbon dowels fitted to the bearers, as one of the mounts had ripped it's bolts out and another had just sheered. That isn't going anywhere now either!

I had a keel moment too - down the side of the empty fuel tank on the starboard side, I caught sight of a dirty great bolt, and had a horrible thought that it must have been one of the draw bolts that go through the keel foil and it's socket inside the boat. After what happened to Jean I am a bit sensitive about anything like that, as I suspect all of us left out here are. In the end I couldn't stand it any more, and I removed the tank and had a look - everything was fine, I think someone had just dropped a load of bolts down the side during the refit - panic over - phew!

As I write we are finally (touch wood!) escaping the clutches of the world's biggest high pressure - the breeze is now steady at around fourteen knots and the sun has set leaving a bright full moon showing clear skies and glistening on a calm sea with a gentle swell. I will sleep tonight mind you, I have been running around like a headless chicken since sunrise! When the sun came up and the breeze became steady, eventually it became spinnaker time. I got everything rigged and went for a hoist, but I could feel bumps as I pulled on the halyard - I thought I had damaged the top block, so down it came, and up I went instead! It is the one thing I don't like doing alone, but boy do you get a kick out of getting down on deck again afterwards! With a crew it's fun to go flying up and escape them all in complete safety - it is always so quiet up there, and from a tall mast you can see the curvature of the earth. I was not looking today though; the breeze had come up and the boat was pitching and as I clung on for dear life like some sort of pole dancing koala I really began to wish I had worn my crash helmet! All was OK up there, I just think everything had got dry, but on the way up I saw that where we had been sailing with gennaker and staysail, when we only use very little halyard tension, the halyard block had twisted and gradually sawn through the inner forestay! It is about seventy five percent through, so it was a very near thing indeed. So the rest of the day comprised four trips up to the second set of spreaders as we sailed along with full main and "Toe in the Water" kite, as I lashed up a second block to put up a second halyard, then used what was the staysail halyard as a stay and lashed it's two parts and the old stay all together, and knotted and lashed the bitter end at the mast base with a couple of tons of tension! It won't break now, and luckily the staysail hanks are velcro and on the generous side, so they still go up and down around three sixteen millimeter pieces of string!

My arms and legs are like lead after all that I must admit, and my elbow feels like it has been injected with grit, but it will be OK tomorrow. I am going to have some supper now, and try not to do what I did last night - make my banana and apple compote with salt water - I used the wrong tap, I was tired! It took me a few mouth-fulls to cotton on the fact that it had salt in it, and shame on me, I thought all that night and until the following day that it had occurred when it was made, then the penny dropped, it was my fault!

All in all, it has been a good few days - the boat is good to go again with all the repairs that I know of finished, we are moving again, and I am learning a bit of patience! At least I can start and look at the rankings again, I haven't dared over the past few days. I got some good film of my albatross with a birth mark too; even in five knots of breeze he didn't need to flap. He wasn't going fast as usual though, so I caught him nice and clearly - he didn't hang around for long, they like a bit more breeze I think, he just came to check up on me, lapped the boat a few times taking long enough for me to do my filming and then was gone. Now we have wind he'll be back tomorrow, and so will we be, back after the boats in front once again.

Blog 17

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 GMT

I have had a perfect few days sailing, reaching in stable steady winds from the Northwest, during which time I have hardly had to go on deck. They have been easy miles that should have come to an end today and been replaced with light winds for a few days as we go around this high up by the Ice Gate, but this is not the case at present. All was going as predicted - I put up a gennaker as the breeze dropped and went aft, then gybed, then shook out a reef, and then it built and came forward again, so now I am reaching on the other tack! It is shifting around nearly thirty degrees as we speak, which was making it hard for the pilot to steer as it has not been flat enough to set it up yet, and it is giving me a much wobblier course than the nice straight one that I imagine you can see at home! Still, we are heading in the right direction and have only three thousand six hundred and seven miles to Cape Horn.

It is strange to be torn between wanting to go fast and catch up the others in front, and really needing to slow down to get the pilot calibrated in order to be able to go fast! Everything will happen in it's own good time, and I just couldn't bring myself to sail deliberately into a high to do a few hours work, and then spend days getting out of it again! It is really nice up here at these higher latitudes - quite warm and often sunny. The shrimps seem to think so to, there are countless millions of them, and every wave brings dozens onto the deck, and usually they leave again on the next one, but if not they can survive for ages under a bit of damp string, and they are big enough to pick up and throw back if you find them stranded! They have very large eyes, which makes me wonder whether they go into very deep water where there is no light, or whether they are just active at night too. I bet they make up a good part of the bioluminescence of our wake. Curiously, there are few birds, although today for the first time I have an albatross again, one who is easy to spot because he has a birthmark! On his back on the right where his wing joins there is a patch of black feathers the size of your fist on an otherwise white back for some strange reason - there are so many questions that I can't answer.....

Brian told me to keep an eye out for the Southern Lights last night but it clouded over which was a shame so I didn't see them, but there will be other nights though I'm sure. All the bad weather seems to be lurking around below our latitude at the moment, which is a welcome respite from the beatings we had in the Indian Ocean. I had a good look at the islands in the South Pacific earlier today, and I must admit I can see exactly why Bernard Moittessier decided to go around again and then stop there, they do look ideal and it would be a perfectly natural thing to do. Still, this is not the time and neither is this the ideal boat to go messing about near reefs - I will have to wait until my racing days are over and the kids have left home, not that I want either of those things to happen in a hurry! Whenever I think of Bernard Moittessier, I always think of my favourite picture caption in any book I have ever read - in the "Voyage for Madmen" about the Golden Globe, underneath a picture of his boat it reads "Joshua. Made of boilerplate. Like her skipper." which I think is fantastic and sums the man up for me. In some ways all of those adventures happened in a simpler time I'd have loved to have been around in, but I must admit an IMOCA 60 is more fun and arguably more fit for purpose than a thirty foot plywood trimaran! You can't deny they were a tough lot, all of them.

It is amazing to see how fast we are crossing the lines of longitude. I was just getting used to Australian time which is easy - 0600GMT is 1800 local (or that was what I was doing!) and already it has changed and now it is dark by 0600 GMT. I just have breakfast now if I wake up and it's light outside, I have no watch and Kim has my phone, so I can't keep local time on anything, and it's too complicated to work out every time, so I just don't worry any more as long as I get at least three meals packed into a day! If you change the time on the computer to local time all of your weather forecasts are in GMT, so you can soon get in a muddle, particularly if you are me!
I am going to have an hours doze now and see whether this wind has stabilised a bit, and then make a cunning plan on what to do next over supper!

Blog 16

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 GMT

Happy New Year! I am reporting from a nearly completely mended boat! The generator is well and truly lashed down now, all the laminating up of the components and the new internal strongpoints to take the load off the wishbone are completed, all we need is a bit of weather where there is not gallons of water hosing down the deck every few seconds so I can make the holes in the deck and fit it all. I also spoke to a very helpful chap called Miles from B&G on New Years Day, believe it or not - how's that for service! I am back down to one pilot at the moment after more troubles, but he is convinced that I tried to commission the pilot in a really big swell and keep the boat moving as it steers itself frantically from lock to lock for two minutes, which is quite a workout I can tell you! The commissioning is actually supposed to be performed in flat water tied to the dock, not conditions that it is easy to replicate in the Southern Ocean! When it goes light again shortly I'm sure I can make a better job of it, and hopefully that will be the end of my problems.

At the moment we are in a lovely stable ridge if high pressure which has given us first North Easterlies - I got the gennaker out, I'd almost forgotten I had it because it had been shut away in the front of the boat for so long! - then eventually strong North Easterlies which I have had for the past nearly twenty four hours, which has meant we have been going upwind in some fairly lumpy conditions and over thirty knots, which is plenty enough to slam upwind with in a flat bottomed boat! Over the past couple of hours it has come back and we are reaching again and making good speed towards the Eastern end of the Ice Gate.

I filmed us crossing back into the West, another significant milestone on the voyage, and the good old Maxsea routing software is telling me two weeks to Cape Horn at this speed! In reality we will be a bit longer than that, we are doing fifteen knots at the moment. I took quite a bit of film (for me!) and have been trying to send it back, but the boat has spent the past few days quite well heeled towards the Antarctic and away from the satellites which are up near the equator, so it can't see them for long enough to transmit anything, which is a pain, or I assume that is the problem.

I had another day which was one of those that will stay with me forever - I can still see it clearly now if I close my eyes. I sailed very close by Campbell Island, which is three hundred and fifity miles from New Zealand. I would think that the island and it's outlying rocks form the last part of the cone of a volcano; the rocks around rise up vertically like tombstones from the sea, I was five miles away but I would say they were a great deal bigger than the Needles, and much more slab sided. Above about one hundred metres everything was completely blanketed by a thick layer of cloud, but it was spectacular and moody non the less, and the first land I had seen since Madeira, but the best part was the albatross. As I bashed upwind past the island in short, shallow seas, there were dozens and dozens of them, infact just by looking behind (it was too wet to look forward!) I counted nearly forty, and if you consider the number infront and those lost behind waves, there were probably a hundred within my five mile range of visibility, and some of each one of all the species I have seen so far. Do you know, apparently for a long time sailors thought that they had no legs or feet and never landed, and sure enough their feet are difficult to spot, but occasionally they must get stiff or something and so they dangle them down and shake them so they look like they are made of jelly, then they put them away again! It is really quite funny. I have also seen one take off from the water - it requires timing and the help of a few handy waves. It is not the most fitting of manouvers for such a graceful bird, but he quickly recovered and tucked his rubber feet away, climbed, banked and turned back over the boat at speed as if to say "See, I can fly in a proper fashion!" Maybe that's where they go at night?

Have a look at the Island on Wikipedia or something, it has an interesting history, having been a sealing and whaling station, and now a nature reserve with no humans on it, and home to the world's rarest duck, the Campbell Island Teal. If I was cruising, which I have never really done, I would have stopped there, it has a very sheltered looking inlet on it's eastern side; another time maybe.........

Blog 15

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 GMT

Two blogs in two days? What's happening? I just wanted to write and say what a difference a day makes, it is really incredible. The wind has eased, and this mornings big squalls have been replaced with a gentle eighteen to twenty knots of breeze which is giving us a broad reach in beautiful sunshine with not a cloud in site - not one! It is incredibly bright outside and the sea is a rich mid blue flecked with small amounts of white here and there, the albatross look like they have been freshly bleached and positively shine. It is like I have rediscovered colour after days of grey - the red of the mainsheet and the yellow of the little tracker beacon lashed to the back of the boat are vivid as if seen as if through new eyes. I have been on deck for the first time in as long as I can remember without oilskins and not got soaked, which seems really strange!

I had one of the last tortellonis with two pots of tomato sauce and some of the happy shopper cheddar grated on top, and a slice of Sodebo "Space Bread", which is vacuum packed in industrial thickness plastic, and miraculously springs back into shape when released. It is a hundred calories a slice so goodness knows what it has got in it! I finished up with a couple of satsumas, I have hardly any of those left now, and as the fridge (cockpit) is warming up they won't last long now. Suitably fortified I am now ready for anything.

Now we are at the half way point it is strange to begin to see how things have been used up - I am rationing kitchen rolls, and one of my fairey liquid bottles froze I think and turned to green puppy slush; and is so thick it won't slide down the bottle let alone come out of the spout! (I am dying to take it back to Tesco in Dorchester and try and get a refund!) I have used one of the big tanks of diesel, and I have one left and a full day tank with another eighty eight litres in it, so we should be fine. Most of the freeze dried main meals I like have gone too, and I am left with lots of rice dishes - I am not a good vegetarian and not that keen on rice!

The wind is forecast to ease further, and I am going to take advantage of this and do some mending! The gooseneck and the generator namely, but in the meantime I am going to enjoy the sunshine and waste some diesel on listening to the stereo much too loudly!

Looking forward to getting past New Zealand

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 GMT

I think I need to come down here more often to get a real handle on this place. It has been an odd twenty four hours, going from flat calm, eight knots of breeze and the lowest I have ever seen the barometer in the very centre of the last low, to having to slow the boat down as we got clobbered by the last front - there wasn't that much wind, about fifty odd knots, just a really awkward sea state that called for the fourth reef to slow us down, (I thought it necessary when we went from twenty six knots to seventeen in what felt like a boat length - all the telephones came off their hooks, the ammeter came out of the chart table and stuff generally went everywhere!) and that sea state has stayed with us all through today - I haven't dared go any faster for fear of breaking something else! Then in an instant, about ten minutes ago, it suddenly straightened itself out and our boat speed has gone up fifty percent! I have to get used to those times when you just can't go flat out!

Since I wrote last, there have been some real highs and lows. I think for me the most extreme of the race so far. I have to say Christmas day was thoroughly miserable, so much so I nearly wasn't going to mention it. I felt I was on a go slow at the back of the fleet on a broken boat, on the opposite side of the world to my family who I really missed, and I have come here to race after all not cruise, and it was very, very difficult at that moment as you see the leaders slipping away, those behind gaining on you as you feel you are just fire-fighting breakages all the time. Alone on a boat all emotions are heightened, so all of the above coupled with some very touching Christmas cards and a sad book for a present meant I was really struggling. I had to give myself a really good talking to and examine why I was here, what I have gone through to get here, and what the event meant to me. Sometime in the early hours of Boxing Day I awoke to a sharp cracking noise and thought the worst, that the boom had come off, but no, it was my small wooden Christmas tree which had come unstuck from the chart table and all the little resin Santas had hit the chart table all at once with a sharp crack right by my ear. I took that as a sign and packed it away (until we have another little Christmas when I get home) and put Christmas and all of the associated emotions firmly behind me. So after having given myself a good kick up the backside I pulled my finger out and had quite a good run over the next period - maybe I tried a little too hard, the generator ripped of it's mountings and is currently lashed down! Another job, but a quick and easy fix, when it calms down in the next forty eight hours.

Shortly afterwards I got a call from Andy at the Race Media Centre, who told me I had done a good twenty four hour run of three hundred and something miles, and did I know I had been voted Seahorse Sailor of the Month! I had no idea whatsoever, I am in a complete vacum out here. I cannot afford to surf the internet, so I get my news of the outside world from Kim at home, and also Brian, Jonny and Sam, so it was a complete surprise to find that anyone has noticed me lurching around out here, and a real honour to get the award that normally only famous people get! I still can't quite work out why I got it, but it just goes to show how your fortunes and mood can turn around in a matter of hours.

I am absolutely fine now, and looking forward to getting past New Zealand, getting the boat mended and weather wise having a somewhat nicer time in the Pacific that we have had in the Indian Ocean. I want to try and get a few miles back on the boats in font of me by Cape Horn too, but I have to temper that with getting around in one piece, that attrition is still horrendous still after I had hoped we had seen the last of it.

I am busy learning French now with Michele Thomas - he is very good, if a little scary. I expect he went to school in the days of frequent cane usage, and you can tell just sometimes from his voice that he wouldn't mind using it on some of his pupils occasionally! If nothing else breaks I'll be speaking like a native by the time I get home!

Christmas Day...

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 GMT

As I sit and write this, listening to my Christmas CD, I can see on my starboard side white foam covering the backs of the waves as they go away from me, and to the port side a confused and heaped, untidy sea with haphazard waves left by the big wind shift we had last night, all a glorious deep blue under a bright sun. To windward there is a huge and ominous black cloud that looks like it will be trouble - we have already had a few squalls where the wind goes from thirty to fifty five knots quicker than you can count and suddenly I am not under - canvassed any more - the sea becomes a total white-out with sleet and rain and the boat charges off like a mad thing banging and crashing into the big cross sea at over twenty knots and threatening to shake the generator loose and rattle the teeth from your head. The barometer is as low as it can go but still falling, and I don't have a proper handle on the weather situation as it is very confused and complicated at the moment, and to top it alI I am really having to nurse the boat as the gooseneck pin which holds the boom to the deck has broken, and if I am not careful the boom will come off - that problem has finished a few people's races, but I am sure there is a way to repair it, just not at the moment - it's difficult enough to stand up - so all in all not ideal really, and not how I thought Christmas would be a couple of days ago.

Still, it will calm down and I will get the boom off and sort it out - nothing lasts for ever. Patrick the rigger kindly said he would check his e-mails over Christmas in case I had trouble, and about six hours later I e-mailed him to say I had a problem! He and Josh are thinking about a solution, as am I, and we have some ideas, but until then I am on a bit of a go slow which is the most frustrating part. Still, this is a temporary setback, and you have to offset it against the good stuff, it could be much worse and I am here of my own choosing - if I had to close the toolbox I'd get bored anyway just sailing and watching the birds! I would like to try bored for a while if that could be arranged though......just to see.

Even though it is I suppose sometime in the afternoon here I am dying for everyone at home to get up so I can ring them! It is odd not to be there today, but I'm not the only one, many people are not at home with their families where they should be at this time of year, and in particular as you enjoy your families today spare a thought for our servicemen and women who are posted abroad in all those trouble spots around the world, for whom I can assure you it will be business as usual.

Kim's reply to he broken gooseneck was "You should have taken your welder"........I haven't got it needless to say, but if anyone has a book entitled "How to make a lathe using a marine diesel engine, a screwdriver and other things commonly found on an IMOCA 60" I would very much like to hear from them, that would be a great present!

Blog 12

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 GMT

I had an e-mail from a friend a few days ago telling me I really should write more blogs - everyone else was doing more than me and I must keep them coming. I promised I would, but every time I thought I was going to be able to do one something happened, it has been pretty eventful here just recently as you will see.

It is old news now I suspect, but I experienced my first major Southern Ocean blow. It was at the time the most uncomfortable twenty four hours I had spent at sea. I was ready and waiting for it, batteries charged, lots of water made, gear stowed and the fourth reef prepared. I had the storm jib in the cockpit ready for use, and waited. The barometer dropped more quickly than I have ever seen, and then stopped. Then it blew. Not the most wind that I have ever been in by a long way, but still very strong - fifty seven knot sat the height, and steadily over fifty for a long time. The sea state became very large very quickly, and then began to even and become regular just in time for the shift when it all went haywire again. It was pretty entertaining to gybe in a big cross sea and fifty knots, but I took my time and the boat behaved impeccably. On the other gybe the sea was suddenly much easier again, and we had some fantastic boatspeeds - twenty nine knots on the GPS on one surf as I sat clutching the chart table, holding on for dear life and wondering how it would end! The noise and motion are terrific at those speeds, more akin to a bobsled than a boat I would imagine as you sway and bang through what feels like a tube of water all around you, and the water comes down the deck with enough force to take your legs from underneath you and then fills the cockpit. Periodically I went on deck to have a look around and check everything, but also to observe the power of my environment which was breathtaking - mountainous seas the colour of lapis lazuli topped with brilliant white crests that were blowing off, towering up near the second spreaders, and occasionally the sun would shine turquoise through a wave crest just before it broke. Sometimes we would perch on top of a wave, and then drop down into the trough with the boat pointing down at an angle of about thirty degrees and plough straight into the one infront. The first time I saw it happen I thought we were going to pitchpole, but as always up came the bow, solid bow wave down each side and over the deck, but always most importantly that bow came up as a Finot should, and it gave me even more confidence in the boat, it is a very seaworthy hull shape. Down here the seas are always large, and you are a long way away from home and help - that sense of isolation is tangible and adds to the suspense and the experience, which is what makes it different to a blow in the Atlantic or anywhere else I think - how you perceive it.

We had just got through that when I started having other troubles. I was trundling along quite happily when suddenly the pilot stopped working. I am used to that happening, because it has done it periodically for as long as I can recall - it did it in the Atlantic on the way down with a spinnaker up if you remember - anyway, it was doing it more regularly now, and in thirty to forty knots of breeze it was getting pretty un-funny! Each time the boat would stop steering but lock the helm, and crash tack, leaving you with the boat laid flat, pinned down by your sails and the water ballast on the wrong side, the boom held above you by the vang but waiting for the vang to break as it did the first time, and for the boom to come crashing across the boat with huge force into the runners, breaking the battens and possibly many other things too. Initially, switching the pilot off and on would get it going, but then I got error codes and things became more serious.

I think I had eight or ten wipe outs, and each time any loose gear would fly across the cabin, I would fall out of bed or if I was up, my sleeping bag would go on the floor or once into the engine compartment, all of which are wet because of the various leaks. I would go on deck, take the weight off the vang with the mainsheet, put the new runner on, take the old one off, and then I could ease the main and bring the boat more upright, but up until that point the boat is on it's side with the top guardwires underwater at an angle of about fifty degrees! Then I would have to roll away the solent with a winch handle rather than the grinder because you can't use a grinder with the boat at that angle, which takes ages and is really hard work as the waves are lapping into the cockpit and you have to hold on with one hand, and also the sail is full of wind and you daren't let it flog. Then, when the boat is level (ish!), you can drain the ballast, put in the third reef and the boat will lie with the bow up into the waves slightly but rolling like a pig whilst you go and sort out the problem.

At the finish, I had replaced the port rudder reference unit, then re-wired the starboard ram all through the boat using the wires I stole from the wind generator, then I ran the port pilot with the starboard ram and rudder reference unit until that stopped working, where upon I used the starboard ram and the new port rudder reference unit! Still it kept stopping though, and I would have to lie under the chart table joining little tiny wires, or be in a wet, cold lazerette wedged in a corner fiddling with the same small wires or trying to solder the heavy cables that feed the rams all with he boat rolling violently. I filled the cabin and the sink and covered the floor with black dust because I removed two of the hydraulic motors and serviced them in the galley!

The media centre phoned up at one point and said would I be OK to do an interview. I was filthy dirty, wet, I had just burnt myself with the soldering iron, and was sailing towards India at three knots - I explained this and said no, and he said "Can we call you back in two minutes?" I explained that wasn't an option, try tomorrow! I was not happy......

After my final wipe out at about 0330 GMT yesterday, I got the boat going again but slowed right down as a front was coming through, and I just didn't want any more wipeouts with lots of sail up. When it calmed down I fitted a new autopilot control unit, a new rudder reference unit on the starboard side, put a resistor in the starboard instruments which fixed them and wired up everything as it was supposed to be, and re-commissioned the pilots. The back-up pilot worked, and I steered with this for a couple of hours - hooray! The main, port pilot would not work, and it just said "NO PILOT" and I lost my rag in a minor way and nearly put my fist through the chart table as I had enough by this point. Then I remembered there was a cable I hadn't plugged in - I commissioned it and it hasn't missed a beat in nearly twenty four hours!

After a couple of proper meals and some sleep it all seems like a distant memory now. I think the tension of always waiting to wipe out coupled with the fear of what might break when you did, plus the several hours it took each time to get the boat going again really wore me down, but I'm OK now. The next blogs will come more regularly I promise!

Blog 11

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 GMT

There has been some time passed since I wrote last time, but I have not been idle, that's for sure! If you remember I signed off last time about to do a sail change in a building breeze. I had to roll up and take down the Code 5 in what was by the time I got on deck about 35 knots of wind, which is over the limit for an old sail! This is a perfectly normal procedure, I started rolling the thing up but it got jammed half rolled up and half unrolled! There it was, flogging itself silly at the front of the boat. I went up the front to try and free it up, but the furling drum is right at the end of the bowsprit - I was not going out there I can assure you - there was a big sea and we were surfing at nearly twenty knots sometimes! I taped my big kitchen knife to the deckbrush handle and went up to deal with the problem, which was that the cover of the furling line had wrinkled up like Nora Batty's stockings inside the drum, got caught on a cunningly placed spike and wedged itself up very very tightly! Whilst hacking away I took my eye off the ball missed a big wave which we surfed down, and got hosed down the deck, knife in hand, as we buried the bow in the wave infront at high speed - everything went dark, there was a whooshing noise in my ears as they filled up, and I held my breath as water went down my neck right down to my boots, up my nose, up my arms, everywhere. I took some sizeable pieces out of my fingers as I tried to grab stanchions and guardwires on the way past - the force of the water was incredible and I still have the bruises to testify! When I came to a stop at the mast I had managed to keep hold of the knife luckily!

I had several goes at cutting away at the drum, rolling and unrolling the sail; I cut forty five metres of cover of the rest of the line with a pair of scissors on my hands an knees, and still it was up there, half in, half out and flogging like nobody's business. After nearly three hours I decided it had to be dropped on deck as it was whilst I still had a mast! I sailed as far downwind as I dared without gybing, and went for it - first time I aborted and winched it up again before it went in he water, then second time I had it on an "inboard roll" of the boat - it was there on deck, coming down, coming down, then,outboard roll - whoosh, over the side, in the water. The boat stopped short and rounded up into the wind with a parachute handbrake over the side. There followed another two hours of struggling as I tried to get the thing back onboard, but things were going badly wrong - bent stanchions, then the first rip, then around the keel - the stuff of nightmares. I finished up dragging the thing off the bowsprit after trying to save the boltrope for my poor old broken gennaker, but I couldn't get the thing out of the middle of the partially rolled sail. In the end I had to let the thing go before I had to get in the water and get it off the keel. I watched it sink. A twenty thousand pound sail lost because of a hundred pound piece of string with a loose cover. All I had left was the swivel and two thimbles and a ten inch piece of the head.........

I don't mind admitting that nearly killed me, I was fairly well beaten up and bruised, and soaked to the skin, and rapidly becoming cold. It was 1400 when I went on deck, and 1915 when I came back down. I put the heater on for the first time, stripped off, got change and ate two meals as I had missed lunch. The next day my elbow was back to square one, and I couldn't even lift the kettle of the stove. That day was pretty full on with the spinnaker up and down twice, the code 3 up and down twice, and the solent rolled and unrolled and reefs in and out several times. Luckily, Mike Golding had given me a spare furling drum, so I refitted and spliced up an old furling line on his drum. Interestingly he had modified his with an angle grinder to remove the offending spikes! That's where experience counts.

Today, I am back to what might be termed as "normal", and my elbow is pretty good again, although I am missing my code 5, which is the sail I need a lot of time at the moment. More good things have happened as well. Up on the foredeck I looked over the side to see a large shark wallowing on the surface, he disappeared pretty quickly when we bore down on him about six feet away! He was dark blue and about six feet long. It's really strange to encounter animals in the wild that might eat you! The most dangerous animal you get in Dorset is a minke, hardly in the same league as a shark!

On the subject of animals, I have had two Albatross, now called Albert and Ross, who seem to be around for most of the day every day. Albert is an adult and Ross is a younger bird - he has mottled plumage and flaps perhaps more than necessary. He is very curious though, any sign of activity on the foredeck and he is there, watching the black clad fool scampering around, and totally impervious to flapping sails or any other noises that must be totally alien to him - or perhaps not - there are so many different round the world races these days he's probably saying "You don't want to do it like that, you want to do it like this!" "Furling line jammed up is it, Mich Des wouldn't have done it like that!" I also had a species new to science, (or to me anyway) , a kind of small albatross, a "minitross", that I am going to call White's Albatross. He was mostly smoke grey with a black beak and about three quarters the size of Albert. I will have to look them all up when I get home.

It is difficult to describe how big they are; when you get close they are huge, solid muscle across their backs, and about the size of a small child with wings. I tried filming them but they really move with such speed, and despite their size they disappear behind the waves in a trice. To get them on film, up close, in focus, and for more that a millisecond is like trying to film two shy weasels mating in the dark - difficult! - not that I've ever tried that I must admit...........

Blog 10

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 GMT

It is difficult to believe how two days can start so differently; yesterday I couldn't sleep, usually a sign that I need to do something, which in this case was a sail change from spinnaker to gennaker - down a gear if you like. It was getting a bit marginal for the spinnaker, and so it was a job well done - boat speed up and the boat more stable, and hence a load off my nerves. As I finished, I watched the dawn come with surprising rapidity as it seems to down here. At first a finger's width of amber light across the Eastern horizon that swiftly began to illuminate the underneath of the clouds in front of it with every shade of red and purple; it was absolutely stunning, and I stayed to watch it until the sun was up properly.

This morning, however, at about the same time, again unable to sleep I decided to change down to a Code 5, which is like a rolled up mini spinnaker for stronger winds, as the breeze was hitting 30 knots regularly. I went through the motions, rolled away the gennaker, took it down, bagged and stacked it at the back of the boat on deck, and as I was preparing the Code 5 there was a big bang that I felt through the boat - "Oh, we've hit something" I thought - not an unusual occurrence if you sail in the English Channel which is absolutely full of flotsam from shipping and rivers, and so I carried on and put up the sail, but when I unrolled it I could not get the boat to steer. Without further ado I rolled it up again, which is no mean feet in 30 knots of breeze, and looking over the back of the boat I convinced myself that the wash was different from the starboard rudder and the earlier collision had broken the tip off it. What went through my mind was pretty grim, the thoughts of coming so far to wind up in Cape Town to do a rudder repair or retire if I didn't have enough materials on board to fix it. At the very least I'd be re-starting at the back. I went all through the steering gear checking that the rudders hadn't been knocked out of alignment and everything seemed OK, so in desperation I gybed the boat with the ballast on the wrong side to get the rudder out of the water - it was OK! minus a big chunk of it's orange paint, but otherwise unscathed. So what was wrong with it, why wouldn't it steer? I put a second reef in and then - we were off with me feeling like a fool! The size of the swell and the increased breeze during the sail change just meant that the boat was going too slowly (ten knots) for the rudders to work, and I had heard the bang, put two and two together and made six! It's there in the Ladybird book of sailing on page three "If the steering doesn't work and the top guardwire is underwater, try putting in a reef!"

Suitably humiliated but much relieved, I unrolled the solent and had a stress free half an hour in bed before putting the Code 5 up and getting going again. The highest speed so far is twenty two point six knots by the GPS, but it is a bit nerve racking as with reduced mainsail the top of the mast wobbles about like nobody’s business! I am assured that is OK, and it's still up at the moment I'm pleased to say!

Over the past few days I have been sitting here full dressed at the chart table waiting either to reduce sail, or for broaches or breakages, I have been pushing fairly hard with sails I don't know yet, and when you do try and sleep it is very shallow and not satisfying as you are a bit on the edge of your seat, so to speak, hence the fact that I have not written anything in the past few days, not because there hasn't been anything to talk about, because there has been much to report on other than just boat stuff.

I am now in albatross country - not the really big wandering variety, the ones that are regular visitors to me have a black back, but they are still pretty big. I have always rushed to see them when they go scooting by at a distance. You can see their wings flexing with the weight of their bodies as they make some pretty dramatic but effortless turns to skim the waters surface and then soar up for a look round. Their flexing wings gives me some comfort regarding my flexing mast! When I had my snooze this morning I looked out of the door to see one looking in at me! He was flying behind the boat and having a good look inside, which was really quite something for me.

The whole place is awash with birds, dozens of them at any one time. With the exception of some pigeon-like birds which are small and plump, all of the seabirds here are of the racing snake variety - pointy wings and streamlined bodies. There are none of your fish and chip eating seaside gulls here, they are all serious flying machines! There are some all blacky brown birds with clown's eyes painted on in white that fight and squabble amongst themselves, but there are numerous other types too. It also seems to be a haven for small squid, and there must be countless millions out there. This morning one was in the cockpit - I don't know how he got there. He was silver grey and about eight inches long. When I touched him he shrank back inside his mantle so only the ends of his tentacles were poking out and he looked very comical! He got sent back over the side. There were some others that had been washed into a rolled up sail at the back of the boat - one was no more, but the other two were OK and got put back over the side. They are obscure but beautiful creatures with their big eyes, but I'm not sure I'd like to meet a giant one though!

Anyway, the breeze is building again and I'm going to have to do something about my sails - late lunch again!

Blog 9

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 GMT

Well quite a lot has happened since I last wrote. Every time I have nearly got down to writing, something else has happened. Last night I was about to do some filming and send a blog when, as I was downstairs fiddling with the camera, the mother of all squalls came through, we broached, and I dealt with it in the usual manner and went back downstairs. Ten minutes later there was a sickening bang, the boat came upright, and there was a papery rustling sound which was my gennaker, or two bits of it. Gennakers are large sails that fly off the bowsprit, and have a bolt rope that goes up the leading edge that the sail flies from, and that you can rotate by pulling on a piece of endless string to roll the sail away, just like a kitchen blind! Anyway, the bolt rope had broken, which meant the sail took all of it's load, and the head pulled off it. Not a big repair, but in an important place. It took ages to get it back on deck, it is quite a big thing on your own at roughly twenty five meters by twelve by twenty three! It did not want to go into it's bag either, but I couldn't leave it loose on deck! The only problem is it is about three feet around at the moment, so it won't go down the forehatch by a long shot! The worst of it is in between the squalls it is the sail I really need at the moment. I delayed putting it up as it is eight or nine years old, and I didn't want to obliterate it in a squall which is precisely what I did. Poor old sail, but it will live again. Suit man with needle and thread (Me in this case) My track must have looked like the Starsky and Hutch's as I sailed downwind to tidy up the mess, then more upwind with the solent, and then downwind again with a different gennaker which is just not right for the point of sail I wanted, and then back to the solent! I'm surprised I didn't get a call from the race office to find out what I was up to!

I had a Sikaflex spree as well. One of my computer screens bounced out, and the window above my bed started pouring in water, which is OK here, but not good when it gets cold, so they got stuck back and sealed up, and I glued up the thing that holds the microphone for the VHF, which had made a scuff mark on my generator panel where it has been swinging back and forth for three weeks! I don't know why Sikaflex doesn't sponsor a boat, after all, the entire marine industry would fall apart without the stuff, and I must admit, so would most of our house and our cars!

Luckily, it's not as warm as it has been, so it is easier to sleep and you do have an appetite sometimes - I am eating all of the heavy things first because I am really starting to resent all of the extra weight! It also means that I have to start wearing things on deck too. I'm doing pretty well in that line, we are sponsored by Guy Cotten, a French clothing manufacturer who had the faith in us to offer their support when it was by no means clear that we were going to get to the start line, and they have done us proud. Their kit is fantastic, and I seem to have most of their range and multiples of most things here on board, and some special items just for the Vendee. The only downside is when I need to get myself on deck in a hurry I am to be found doing my Lawrence Lewellyn-Bowen impression, finger on lips, wondering what I should put on!

I had a sort through of the food as well, after the strange smell from the back of the boat became stronger an stronger. I found the source - six dozen eggs, and each half dozen box had a broken one in it. You can imagine what that was like in the heat that we've had. I had to take them on deck, cut open the bags so the eggs went over the side, where I'm sure they'll be gobbled up by the well known I'vegotnosenseofsmell fish (Latin name), then I had to wash the bags out so I could put them in the bin. Vile. Still, now the boat smells a bit better!

I must go now and do some sail repairs, or at least make a plan for when it gets lighter and so dryer on deck so I can do it later. I can get all of my materials together at any rate, and then I have to do some filming!

Blog 8

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 GMT

At long last we seem to be getting the same wind as everyone else! I have not seen the GPS go below 11 knots so far this morning, which is a bit more like it. I had parked myself in a narrow (but clearly defined by Maxsea) band of lighter winds that did me no favours after my appaulingly unlucky crossing of the Doldrums! Anyway, we're out of it now thank goodness.

I had my little celebration as we crossed the Equator at 0350 or there abouts the other morning - a little late to start drinking really, but after giving a bit to Neptune, and a bit for the boat, there was very little left for me! I had been overly generous with the first two toasts, which was a shame, as I had used the bottle of wine that Norbert had given to each of the competitors on start day, and which was absolutely beautiful! I had a message from my friend Richard who told me that it was almost seventy years to the day the Eric Newby had crossed the Equator in one of the last working square riggers called the Moshulu - you can read about it in "The Last Great Grain Race" - but there they painted Eric and three other first timers with read lead paint from head to toe, shaved two stripes into their hair and painted the scalp green, which amused Richard no end. No namby pamby health and safety at work in those days! Luckily being alone, I had to endure no such humiliation, although I'm sure there are lots of people who would have liked to have had a go!

I have been bimbling away with the Fleet satellite phone and the compression software trying to get some video sent back. I might just finish up sending film back as attachments to an ordinary e-mail, which will be horribly expensive, but I need to get something sent back, but I don't want to find Kim as had to sell the house to pay the communications bill though! I started out with ten thousand pounds as a communications budget, but that got hoovered up on other things pretty quickly. You see, the intention was there to be a good person media wise, it just hasn't worked out yet...

On the not very interesting and apparently never ending subject of the second instruments, I think we have found the problem at long last. I am just waiting for some calmer conditions before I test out the theory - no I'm not wishing for calm just yet, I've only just got wind! It can wait, I'm not going anywhere.....

I spent an hour on deck standing at the back of the boat and just watching, getting the occasional dousing in spray from a warm sea, and bathed in very powerful sunshine. I stood there until I was at risk of burning just watching a seabird who was a bit like a racing gannet, very sleek and pointy with a brown back, white and brown underneath and with little orange feet. He was flying about thirty feet up directly to windward of the bow of the boat, with his head looking all about the sea surface just in-front of the boat. After a short while it became apparent as to what he was doing; every few minutes, and sometimes more frequently, we would scare up one or sometimes a number (a flock?) of flying fish, whereupon he would do his Peregrine Falcon impression and chase them, inches above the water at high speed. On innumerable occasions he was oh so close that I'm sure he could almost taste them, they would go into torpedo mode, fold up their wings and disappear beneath the surface. He never got one, but he never gave up either. I can still see him out there now through the window as I write. I'm sure he'll get one in the end.

Blog 7

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 GMT

Now, as of two hours ago, my writers block (not that you could call me a writer!) has been lifted as I have been released from the Doldrums. I thought initially that perhaps I'd escaped punishment, but it was not so. At one point I was trapped under a cloud that filled a 24 mile range radar screen - and boy, did it rain! It was almost Biblical! We just sat in the midst of it with the sails banging and slatting back and forth, which is a sailor's Chinese water torture, with the rain bucketing down.

That was the largest of many clouds, but there were very many equally frustrating ones, sometimes with wind in them, and sometimes only with wind at the edges, and nothing but torrential rain and no wind at all in the centre. There were gusts, but never that big, up to about 20 knots usually, but that's enough when you normally have a couple of reefs in and full ballast tanks by that point, and, you've guessed it, it can blow from any direction. It changes direction so frequently that I often had to look at the wind direction from the instruments and make funny angles with my hands to work out which tack I should be on to get me best to where I wanted to go! At some points I was going backwards faster than I'd been going forwards for the preceeding few hours! It changed so often it can get confusing if you're tired. It has been really frustrating, and I am not keen to come back, but it is another experience to add to the list. I often imagined what it would be like to come through here in a square rigger. You can see how they got stuck here for weeks, sooner them than me.......

I haven't had chance to do any more on the second instruments and pilot, I have been on deck for a lot of the time, and am now short of sleep. The boat is very clean though, lovely and salt free. When it rained for the first time, which was both a blessed relief from the heat and the chance for a shower for me, it was interesting to see all of the red dust washing out of the sails and the boombag. I take it all blew across from Africa, incredible really.

When we were moving, it was great to watch the flying fish. They take off into the wind, get a bit of altitude, and then bear away and go hammering off downwind for hundreds of yards in some cases, just inches above the surface. There have been very few birds however, and usually they are on the windy edges of the clouds because it is easier for them to fly. There have been some gannet like birds with diamond shaped tails that I have not seen before. One stayed around for most of a day, and seemed to be just messing about, it is testament I suppose to how much there is to eat out here that they have the time to do that. He was like Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, just playing in the wash and updrafts from the sails, going round and round the boat time after time like a child with new game.

Now we are moving again we can settle into catching up with the boats in front, which is going to be a tall order, but If I don't loose any more miles I shall be happy! Brian called up. He was very well and quite chatty, and it was really good to talk to someone else in the race. He said it was lovely a bit further on, and the sailing was easy - I am looking forward to it!

Blog 6

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 GMT

If I thought it was hot before I was mistaken, now it is really hot! I made the mistake of slowing the boat right down to do a sail change, and as soon as you stop the cooling breeze coming over the deck then it really hits you, it is roasting and the sun is very powerful. It makes it difficult to sleep except for at night, and it takes your appetite away too.

I have had some strange visitors in the past 24 hours - first a small fly with disproportionally large wings, then a moth at the lights at the chart table, a sabre toothed giant fruit fly that went for a swim before it could bite me, and then the daddy of them all, a giant black cricket who was as fat as my thumb and as long as my index finger, not counting his antenna and three pronged forked tail. He was lovely, and sat on my finger for a moment, until I decided he had better take his chances and fly off to wherever it was he had come from. I launched him - and he didn't fly. I felt terrible, either he was flightless and got here by some other means, or he had a real short -term memory problem and just forgot to flap. I couldn't keep him really, I don't think I'd have had enough food on board! What's so strange about a few insects I hear you ask; well nothing, except we are 700 miles downwind of Africa and 400 miles from the Cape Verdes!

I have serviced the last of the winches today, and had a chat to Arno from the race organization, who is helping me to get my films back to them through the Fleet 77 satellite phone. It's not as simple as all that - the compression and editing software has to be sorted out, and then you have to make sure that it goes to the correct place with ftp's etc - I sound like a techie, when in fact I didn't know what an ftp was until a couple of weeks ago! ( I'm still not sure I know now entirely!) I am getting there with a bit of help though, not bad for a bloke who is generally lost if he can't oil or put coal in a piece of machinery to make it work.

The boat is going along quite nicely, and the jobs list is coming getting smaller too. I have to go up the rig tomorrow, I need to make sure everything is OK before we go into the south. With everything being new up there it is possible that there could be all sorts of problems, mainly where things rub together and chafe through, but we shall see tomorrow..... I hate going up the rig at sea, you have too wear loads of clothes to stop you bashing yourself to bits!

I did give myself a haircut too, and then washed it! I felt much better to not be like a mop, and a lot cooler too! I remembered each of my kids has cut their hair at one time or another as all kids do, and I wasn't quite sure that I shouldn't be telling myself off for doing it too! It doesn't look that bad though I don't think; no patches of scalp showing through that I can feel (I can't see anything, my mirror is pretty poor!) Still, who cares, nobody has to look at it, and it's got a while to grow back!