18:01.446N 055:55.029W

Thursday 3rd December

The wind has returned....hoorah! We sailed through the night, averaging between 7 and 9 knots over the ground so we might make to the ball after all!

Now that all the yachts are closer together we're finding the signal is quite strong of a morning for the roll call, so afterwards I've been having a chat with some of the other boats. And also listening in to a few other chats! It's been welcoming to hear that many others have had difficulties with their cruising chutes so it's not just us! We should be grateful for our pretty pink sail as we think that's what has given us the edge and helped to catch up on the majority of the rally. Well, that and we appear to have been lucky with the winds after chatting to the others who have hardly had any! The tradewinds have been referred to as a conveyer belt and Ian off Lucy Alice commented yesterday that our conveyer belt had been like Waitrose whereas he's had Aldi's. He suggested that some old granny had dropped her shopping on to the red stop button at the end of his conveyer belt!

We ticked another one off in the night, we came within a 100 metres of each other! Would you believe it! (Alan - the boat was called Sinan). We called him up on the radio but got no reply.....not on watch....tut tut tut! Then at this mornings roll call we found out we'd also passed Lucy Alice in the early hours.