We keep the spinnaker up till after dark.The sea is surging,Leonidas is at the helm and all the crew is sitting around at the stern,singing sailing songs and encouraging each other! We have a new moon lying on its back.Where I come from,this heralds bad weather, but the forecast disagrees.

10:30 The wind freshens further and down comes the red monster.Pitty because we were doing 12-15knots!

Monday 28 Nov.

07:00 We improved our position but not much.One Hull ,our Challenger 72 competitor is ahard nut to crack.Up goes the spi in stronguish wind.

12:00 The wind has freshened to 23knots.We are doing 15knots but its not sustainable and regrettably we lower the spi.At moments like this we regret deeply the loss of the smaller,shallower blue spi.We would have kept it up easily at 23knots and at night as well.I estimate we would have been at least 150 miles closer to SL with it.

We sail constantly over 10 with main and genny but cannot fetch SL due to the wind direction.It is forecast to shift to 140 on Friday,which will allow us to sail straight to SL.til then gybes and patience.

20:00 The sea is quite rough with big waves rolling us like the proverbial whore in the hay.We soldier on.

Tuesday 29 Nov.

We have kept our watches at UTC but as we go west the sun rises and sets later.There is a good trade blowing and we gybe to NW.It improves our VMG.a