"Planned to gybe mid-late afternoon as the wind shifted before the front, but on starboard gybe had a big lift, which may have precursored an early arrival of low. So gybed on it, and then the wind shifted again, so I'm heading off to the NE, not where I wanted to go, thought ENE, but here we are, not going to gybe twice again to save the miles, too much risk in gybing boat in 35 knots of wind, which is what  we have. Also, can't hurt to get set up early as the weather files have consistently underforecast the wind velocity, maybe by 10+ knots, so have to think that the low will be considerably windier than predicted so far at 45 knots.  Had several small ice rain clouds this am, it is pretty cold out. Many albatross around, grand, majestic, trying to push my mind to be calm in this weather like an albatross. Got a really good 60 min nap this am, went back for another after checking everything, and 30 seconds into it the pilot alarm goes off. Fortunately, the pilot defaults to compass, with this being a wind instrumentation problem I think. But it is back on and functioning now, just hard to know whether you can take off the old foul weather gear."

Rich Wilson (Great American III) in his daily message

 

This evening, not only is Jean-Pierre Dick (Paprec-Virbac2) out in front, just under fifty miles ahead of Mike Golding, but over the past 24 hours, he is also credited with the greatest distance covered towards the finish.  Between yesterday at 19h and this evening he covered 442.9 miles

 

"The Southern Ocean is a very humbling place for me. My emotions are raw and on edge due to lack of sleep, cold, isolation, loneliness and let’s face it, just plain fear of the unknown. It seems that tactically, for a while no matter what sail, daggerboard and keel configuration I tried, the boat didn’t want to respond to my setup. It’s very frustrating so I just returned to basic sailing skills to get through the tough conditions and before long, bingo, back ontrack. That’s what I have been doing for the past few days, it was driving me crazy as to why I was so slow. In a tired state, you start to second guess decisions you have made, which of course leads to more mistakes. So, back to basics.
We entered this project to see how we could do against the best in the world but it became clear that we would not have the money it took to win as most of my time was spent marketing and promoting the event rather than physically and mentally training for it. When it came time to put the boat back on the race course after the start I had to look to other motivations to do the race. One very strong motivation, in fact the motivation that has kept us going from day 1 was to take the experience and share it with others."  
Derek Hatfield (Algimouss-Spirit of Canada) in his daily message

 

"The last 24 hours have been really busy.  I eventually managed to get a good trim for my Code 0 and managed a few extra miles thanks to that sail, until the wind increased too much. The change to Solent and dropping of the gennaker was really full on – to be on the bow of Roxy as we surfed the big swell at 20 knots was quite impressive. I seemed to be either 6m in the air (as we took off) or under water (as we landed!). It was good exercise, but there is no room for the smallest of errors out here.  It seems that Roxy likes it windy.  However, Roxy was craving attention yesterday, and in the evening she decided to give me some technical challenges. The first was one of my alternators failing to start up. I have two, plus other ways of charging, but down here with the pilot on high gain settings, we are using quite a lot of electricity and working alternators are imperative. Luckily, after chasing cables I found the loose connection and the repair was an easy one. Obviously, Roxy was not happy that I had fixed her so efficiently, so problem number 2 quickly arrived. I had just changed down to staysail as there was 35-40 knots of wind, and when I went to cant the keel back up...nothing happened! Again, I have a back-up manual pump on my keel system, but it takes all day pumping to move the keel just a tiny way, so that is not really an option.  So, in the dark, with my head-torch, volt-meter and tools, I found myself head first in the batteries and keel hydraulics as Roxy hurtled down the huge waves at break-neck speeds! I would have much preferred to be in bed, but in this race, a problem must be fixed immediately to ensure it does not get worse. Luckily, again, I singled out a faulty solenoid and managed to re-cable the system to bypass the defective part.  "
Sam Davies (Roxy) in her daily message

 

"I really don't really want to see any ice because I saw enough last time round to last a lifetime. It is clearly marked but I don't want go anywhere near. It's so hard to see anything when you are going at this speed and you can't go on deck for any length of time because it's so wet and cold. The radar is on but there is a lot of wave action so you don't know whether you are in it until you see it. You can't slow down. You just have to stay away from where we know they are and keep your fingers crossed. It's the so called little ones - the ones that are less than 50 metres, which I reckon are still pretty big - that are the dangerous ones but you can't have a strategy for icebergs. You just have to be vigilant. There is no point in sitting on deck for 24 hours a day - you can't see in the dark."
Dee Caffari (Aviva) in her daily message

 

On Thursday evening, Marc Guillemot's monohull Safran hit a UFO causing the rudder to kick up.  A simple broach resulted, but it could have been much worse, as for Yann Eliès (Generali), who broke three battens, when his rudder kicked up and the boat rounded up. The result for him was ten hours of hard work at slow speed with the mainsail on the deck.