Jérémie Beyou (Delta Dore) in tenth place, 94.7 miles from the leader, has been sailing in the southern hemisphere for about 24 hours now and is already asking questions about the steady conditions.

"How long is this going to last!? We were looking forwards to the SE'ly trade winds like a kid on his last day of school. We couldn't wait for stable winds and reliable forecasts and we're not disappointed about that.  It's blowing and we're leaning over. We're making steady headway and it's bumpy. And it's going to last.  As we're never satisfied, we can't wait for the moment to turn left.
Ahead of us the high stretches out.  Will we have to go all the way around? Will there be  a low to give us a hand and cut through the middle? Or will there be several options: teh leaders going around and the second group going straight through?
Mystery! Patience! And no big ideas, as we will only be disappointed.So we continue on our way; preferably going as fast as those nearby. That is the only option, and while it may be a bit boring, we have to keep at it. Sailing a boat healed over in choppy seas is noo easy mattter. In fact, heeled over, everything becomes complicated: preparing meals, writing, changing...Try it at home: cut two legs off your chairs, beds, tables and desks.  Some people will tell you that you're crazy, but you'll understand what we're going through!  It works too if you have one leg shorter than the other.  I told you, we were never satisfied!!"

Sam Davies (Roxy) crossed the equator at 14h53 yesterday.  Last night, she sent a message concerning the celebrations.
"Hello from the Southern Hemisphere!

Well today's big news is that the water goes the wrong way round when it goes down the plughole!!! If I had a plughole....
 I offered my traditional Champagne and chocolate. After the celebrations were over, I was busy trimming the sails, and I hadn't noticed that Lucky and Foxy (my lucky duck and his flamingo girlfriend) had pinched the rest of the champagne and were finishing it off. They weren't feeling too good, being in the wrong hemisphere and all that....  Thankfully, the champagne has worn off and I have managed to persuade them back to their home at the chart table where I can keep an eye on them!"

Message from Michel Desjoyeaux (Foncia), received during the night, after he became the fifteenth sailor to cross the Equator:
«3H 43 MIN 20 SEC  on 23/11/2008, Foncia crossed the Equator.  I didn't see Neptune, as it was dark.  He must have been sleeping and me too.  Beating upwind in variable winds.  I didn't know that Neptune suffered from asthma.
Mich
PS A great detective novel is perfect for falling asleep.»

 

Steve White (Toe in the Water) is currently in 17th place, 506 miles from the leader, making his way out of the Doldrums. This evening he described his experience in this infamous zone.

"I have been released from the Doldrums. I thought initially that perhaps I'd escaped punishment, but it was not so. At one point I was trapped under a cloud that filled a 24 mile range radar screen - and boy, did it rain! It was almost Biblical! We just sat in the midst of it with the sails banging and slatting back and forth, which is a sailor's Chinese water torture, with the rain bucketing down. That was the largest of many clouds, but there were very many equally frustrating ones, sometimes with wind in them, and sometimes only with wind at the edges, and nothing but torrential rain and no wind at all in the centre. There were gusts, but never that big, up to about 20 knots usually, but that's enough when you normally have a couple of reefs in and full ballast tanks by that point, and, you've guessed it, it can blow from any direction. It changes direction so frequently that I often had to look at the wind direction from the instruments and make funny angles with my hands to work out which tack I should be on to get me best to where I wanted to go! At some points I was going backwards faster than I'd been going forwards for the preceding few hours! It changed so often it can get confusing if you're tired. It has been really frustrating, and I am not keen to come back, but it is another experience to add to the list. I often imagined what it would be like to come through here in a square rigger. You can see how they got stuck here for weeks, sooner them than me....... When it rained for the first time,which was both a blessed relief from the heat and the chance for a shower for me. There have been some gannet like birds with diamond shaped tails that I have not seen before. One stayed around for most of a day,and seemed to be just messing about, it is testament I suppose to how much there is to eat out here that they have the time to do that. He was like Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, just playing in the wash and updrafts from the sails, going round and round the boat time after time like a child with new game."

Like many of the other competitors ahead of him in the Vendée Globe, Dominique Wavre (Temenos) passed close to the St. Peter's and St. Paul Rocks, the remains of a volcanic outcrop in the middle of the Atlantic, which he described to his shore team today. “Little islands which have appeared in the middle of nowhere. It’s hard to imagine anything more remote than that. They are very small and covered with birds. It’s somewhat illogical to imagine such wild life in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I wasn’t able to see them, as I was too far off for that."
Then, at 1225 GMT, the skipper confirmed his entry into the southern hemisphere and like those he is chasing after, he is thinking of what lies quite some distance ahead, “The future’s not straightforward. I still don’t have a very clear view of what the weather has in store for us next week, but I’m working on it at the chart table.”

 

You can see exactly what it is like to be heeled over bumping into waves in upwind conditions in the latest video from Marc Guillemot aboard Safran.  These conditions are now expected to last for at least four or five days.  Just click on videos in the media section... and tilt your head sideways.