It is midnight Wednesday.  John and Nigel have just gone off watch, to be replaced by Mike and Richard.  We left La Coruna at 1000 hours this morning and are making very good progress south.  All day we have had perfect winds, calm seas and warm sunshine.  Occasionally we are visited by dolphin, who eye us inquisitively for a half hour or so and then disappear as quickly as they arrived.  Mike spotted a basking shark earlier too.

The weather has deteriorated over the last few hours, which required “all hands on deck” to pull in a couple of reefs in the mainsail and reefing down the headsail to the now familiar “pocket handkerchief”.  Still we are making over 7kts and eating up the miles in a slightly noisy, uncomfortable swell.

At daybreak we will decide on our next port of call.

Nigel