"Australia is now our safest option. Towing at sea is always a tricky operation, especially as today we don't have any guarantees about the weather.  Heading for Fremantle, in SW Australia, is the right decision… The boat is really getting shaken around with no mast, as the centre of gravity is so low. So I'm not getting much sleep.  I'm reading a lot as that helps pass the time."  
Loïck Peyron (Gitana 80) announcing his decision to head towards Perth yesterday evening

 

"There are no lasting problems and the rigging is OK!  When the weather improves, I will consolidate the genoa  to be able to use the forestay.  I have been at the helm for 17.5 hours and have stowed the sail and sheets.  There's a heavy swell and confused seas.  You need someone creative at the helm."
Norbert Sedlacek (Nauticsport-Kapsch) in his daily message, after reporting a damaged forestay.

 

"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