Currently south of the entrance to the Med with Madeira, Canaries and Cape Verde ahead.

You can see how the fleet has split, some kept closer to the Portugese coast hoping for better winds, some west of us searching for same reason. Relatively the whole fleet is remarkably close which I guess is what happens if you all have the same boats!Strategy and concentration are the key variables.

Our strategy is to head downwind on a direct course to our waypoint, the shortest route. Those to the west of us are going faster but not in the right direction, so will have to zig zag downwind to get there.

We’ll see what strategy wins… Currently we’re 6th but hope to benefit later.

Our waypoint is a ‘scoring gate’lying just North of Cape Verde. There are 3, 2 & 1 extra points for those who go through it 1,2,3. Right now it’s 1000 mls away so approx 4 days away. London to Brest was 3 days and worth 12.11.10 points.

Life on board is cramped,!! 21 people living within 40 ft of each other.

Amazingly you hardly ever see the people on the other watch, just at watch changeover when no one wants to speak!

I hit a bit of a low point yesterday, the sheer effort and lack of sleep makes it pretty difficult to enjoy it and you think you should be!

I’m working on managing that and just accepting it, makes it hard to enjoy in the moment but I remembered Davina’s Rhys’s advice of when you are struggling, enjoy it through others around you.

Since writing we’ve now gybed and are going due South heading straight to the waypoint, the main reasons are we can steer straight there and the winds are predicted to slacken further West.

Love

Dad / Richard / Ricardo / Tricky / Dick x