This morning Ceilidh has now gybed to the South on a course of 230M since around 07:15 as the wind has become more Easterly.

We have completed 190Nm as our daily run which means we have averaged 8knots for 5 days now and will celebrate a total of 1,000NM logged since Las Palmas in around 4 hours time.

This is a very consistent average which we have never achieved before and has done despite steering problems which is down to a great team performance by all the crew as we continue to steer by hand.

Yesterday was a classic ARC day with bright sunny conditions and a F6 NE driving Ceilidh forward with some style, there was a 3-4 metre swell which she surfed down at 10-12knots whild staying on track. Since the wave period has increased we have found that Ceilidh is tracking much better and we really had an exhilirating day.

This morning we made to do some maintenance on the self tacking genoa car system. Unfortunately whenever we removed the first car from the rail most of the ball bearings escaped onto the heaving deck! This looked like a job too far but after 2 hours, Richard myself and Mags had returned the cars to service with only 1 bb lost overboard. Something of a miracle really!

Life on board:

All the boys had a seawater wash and shampoo yesterday, very refreshing.

The rolling swell is making it hard to eat, sleep and generally live onboard but everyone is coping well. Conditions look a bit lighter from tomorrow evening.

We complete safety checks twice a day around the deck and rigging. These have already prevented more serious issues with the mast wedges and the self tacker car.

We have started compiling a 12 days of Christmas ARC song, lyrics will be advised in due course!

Dave Sturrock