Bossières. with his Finot Conq design which is more than ten years old and went round before, finishing fifth in 2005 as Seb Josse’s VMI, said today that he would take as long as it takes him to get home. He is enjoying the privilege to be still racing. After 48 hours slowed in light and difficulty breezes ‘Calli’ was simply relishing his final days at sea, making good speeds.

He has reached the latitude of Les Sables d’Olonne but now must make his choice when he starts to try and breach this dominant high pressure system which stands between him and the finish line.  

Meantime Sam Davies and Dee Caffari were in London today appearing on BBC Breakfast TV, telling more than 1 milllion viewers of the highlights and low moments on their respective races on Roxy and Aviva.

Steve White is on fine form today. Three simple components adding to his pleasure: good speed, a better course and a cup of tea. The sun was shining when the radio broadcast team spoke to White today, he was under staysail, gennaker and full main and touching 15 knots at times. While he is keen to get back to see his family, he, too was enjoying champagne sailing on Toe in the Water, reflecting that he is looking forwards to getting back for a ‘few beers and a couple of days off’ before knuckling down to his plans for 2012.  White seems to be on course to break the time of Josh Hall, who sailed the 2000-1 race when the boat was Gartmore, and completed the 26,700 miles course in 111 days 19 hours 48 minutes. The course this time is some 1940 miles longer than that race. White still had about 130 miles to pass the Azores.

And Rich Wilson’s mood is matching his course....steadily improving. He should see the NE’ly trade winds lifting for him as they veer to a more easterly direction but he is still very low on good sleep. But he was explaining today how he has been helped listening to the recorded chanting of monks to help take his focus off what is going on with the Great American III, and relax enough to maximize his rest time a bit more. Yesterday he was concerned he might not be back in time for his mother’s 93^rd birthday next week, a source of some anxiety to him since she has been such an inspiration to him. She was a pioneer working in Alaska when she was younger. She moved from Seattle to Fairbanks, Alaska in 1938.

As well as the mood relaxants, the 18 different monks’ chants, he likes a blast of ‘The Boss’, Bruce Springsteen, perhaps when he needs to prepare to go on deck and change sails in difficult conditions.

Norbert Sedlacek’s musical tastes are a perhaps more varied, but he said today that he quite often puts on some loud house or techno sounds to mask some of the noises which he would rather not hear on Nauticsport-Kapsch, like his grinding keel, but equally in today’s perfect conditions, 12-15 knots of E’ly breeze off the Brasilian coast, a little slice of Amy Macdonald’s This is the Life was the musique du jour for Sedlacek today. He awaits quieter conditions to replace his jib halyards....

Steve White, GBR, (Toe in the Water) “ I have just done 15.5 knots which has cheered me up no end and I am heading in the right direction for a change, yes so it all looks nice and rosy today, the sun is out, it is nice and warm. I have the gennaker up and the staysail, full main, just trundling along, really.

It is weird how your focus shifts when you get towards the end of something, you get ready for the end, and it is time for it to end and for you to go on to do the next thing and the weather has not really played ball for us around the Azores, and so maybe I’ve read it wrong and made mistakes, and I think it is probably a fair measure of both, but friends and family start gathering, I wanted to get in before the race village was taken down, I wanted to beat the time the boat went round in in 2000, all these kinds of things, I get my tiny brain set on coming in during a particular band of time, and so when it does not pan out, that can be slightly frustrating. I was pretty frustrated yesterday with all the stuff that happened, but today I am heading in the right direction, it could not be better. It is champagne sailing, I have a nice cup of tea, and everything is ideal and I am enjoying it. By the same token I do really want to get in now, not because I want it to end, I have been away long enough. I want to see the family, I want to have a few beers and a couple of days off and really knuckle down to getting down to 2012. I need to get back and get on with it while I am still full of beans or something or other.

And if you did not set yourself goals and try to keep to them then you would never ge to the start of an event like this.” 

Rich Wilson, USA, (Great American III):

“We got some weather files in this morning for a couple of days and that is good.

Frankly to have slightly less wind at times would not be too bad, given the pounding the boat takes going up here in the tradewinds. We have been making NNW now, we have been up to close to north, we were pretty far over to the north west when we were still in the influence of the low pressure system which formed off the north coast of Brasil, and we have got the satellite pictures of the cloud cover down here. We are just trying to get north as fast as we can, and we are making about 10 knots, with the staysail and three reefs in the main. I still have the issue with the staysail being a little bit too big, we get overpowered a little bit too easily. Through the night we had to let the mainsail out a long way just to keep the boat on its feet.”

“ I tried to go into the bunk but it did not work. I have a fairly comfortable spot here at the chart table, I am not sure how much actual sleep I get, I certainly was asleep for some parts of it, so I feel better today, that is for sure, and I think when we get settled in to the trades then I can get a sail combination and setting where I don’t need to do too much, then I can kind of get some time and try to rest and stretch out.”

“ I have an iPod on board and a couple of tiny speakers at the chart table. A riend of mine recommended I listen to the monks chanting. I have 18 different chants. I listen to the whole thing four times. I have got enough chanting going on here to calm me down that is for sure. It certainly helps to have stuff like that  The rest of the time you are just listening to the boat crashing, crashing into these troughs, and your mind plays trick, and when the boat crashes down you can hear the keel going back and forth a little bit. And so it is good to have a little bit a of a distraction from all that your mind is hearing. Your sense of hearing gets incredibly acute out here, and whenever there is anything different, anything new at all comes into the sound array, you are in high alert, and you got to go find out what that is.”

“ If you are going to go up and make a sail change or the boat is going fast and you want to be jazzed up a little bit, you put on something different, some Bruce Springsteen or something like that, Thunder Road, that will get you going, but in general you can fix the music to what you need at the moment.”

Norbert Sedlacek, AUT, (Nauticsport Kapsch)“It is important for me to keep some parts of the boat especially clean, the navigation table, that is organised and clean and sorted out, and the pantry, and a few important containers, where my stuff is inside, my clothes and my wet weather gear and so on, the problem is that the bilges and the floor, and the walls of the boat inside it s just not possible to keep it clean or dry. The boat is in aluminium and so in the bilge you have the spans and all the welding points, and the different angles and the salt water is travelling around and so it is absolutely not possible to get all of the stuff out and keep it really clean.

I have a very nice iPod on it with a few thousand songs on it, I have a few play lists on it with things you hear nearly daily, it depends on which mentally conditions you are in. One day you maybe just listen to a few techno things, and the next day you want to hear Dido or Madonna or something like that, smooth and nice, and it gives you a nice feeling. When the keel starts to move a little bit too hard then I play a little bit of music, not too loud, just to get another noise around and don’t think too much about it. It can be when something goes wrong. When it is really stormy outside it is really great to hear some rocky music indoors, something of techno or house music, to get a feeling of being in a trance and moving fast and force yourself to move with it And then in the topics you enjoy fast and nice warm music. Today I am listening to the album of Amy Macdonald which is one of my favourites at the moment.”