Hi everyone and greetings from south of Biscay! We are about 170nm into our run and have had a good night last night although neither Robert nor I slept much – usual first 24 / 48 hours situation as it takes a while to adjust.

Things have settled down on board but the sea has not! The wind has gradually veered from SE to S and I suspect will carry on to SW as we are on the bottom end of the low pressure system I think now. The sea is confused and quite steep – but she is generally very dry.

We dropped the genoa this morning and put the yankee up which all went well. Robert did a great job of flaking the large genoa down on the deck and we managed to get it into its bag and stowed. It is quite warm – and doing a job like that just ahead of going off watch which was the case for poor Robert meant that he lay there for an hour trying to cool down! It was the right thing to do and we have maintained good speeds so should manage 150nm or so in 24 hours which is our rolling objective. I just checked the water temp and it is 20.7C and what with the nice bit of sun and the fact that we are running before the wind means it is hot down below, but we both know that if we are tempted to open a hatch we will get a slop of sea straight into the boat! Sun means we are generating well with the Watt and Sea churning away as well so batteries are staying at about 97% which means no need to run the engine today.

I had some issues with the sat phone connection this morning but I think it was just user incompetence as I managed to send an email earlier. This blog diary is another test of my brain, and hopefully all goes well as it would pay to get some more weather information tomorrow. I have just noticed Carrick (Rustler 42) show up on AIS about 7nm abeam of us. I am pleased she has not escaped yet! I think the teams in the east are probably moving well now so we may converge with them at some stage maybe although I meanly hope they are all at least 25nm astern of us!

I spoke to Brendan on Storna Hoga earlier. They are well and going along very nicely. I spoke to Elliot too and he sounded chipper and happy so that is all good.  

That’s all for now – greetings from us both to family and friends!

Tim and Robert