Strong winds and rough seas for much of yesterday and overnight slowed our progress as we decided to focus on reducing stress on the boat (and ourselves) rather than making ground.  After all, who in their right mind would beat to windward in a Force 7?

Dawn this morning has brought some improvement.  The winds have eased to Force 4-5 and whilst they are still dead on the nose, we are now  making ground, mainly in a south easterly direction.  The seas are still quite rough and confused, but the sun is out and there’s much less spray in the air. There’s an area of low pressure approaching from the north east which we will skirt south of, planning to pick up more favourable winds over the next 48 hours.

One overnight casualty is the HF antenna connection to the backstay, which has failed.  So until we get a calmer day and can reconnect it, we won’t be receiving any HF weatherfax forecasts.  Not critical, thanks to the Mailasail service over Iridium.

Otherwise, todays’ big decisions will be when to advance clocks onboard one hour to (GMT-3) and whether to hold a steak and film night tonight (Saturday Night at Sea) or perhaps make today a Monday and wait for the weather to improve!

Morale remains high onboard and we are looking forward to making up some time!

Richard, Ed and Tom