We are OK but slogging it out upwind. Everything is getting harder and to be honest a lot less enjoyable! But it's all good really.. We are in fourth, which is cool – it really helps when you can smell a result. It is keeping us going. The weather is looking really unattractive for the next 5 days - it's non-stop upwind, so not the usual conditions for crossing the Atlantic. It could be a race of attrition in these monotonous conditions, but we're staying focussed and on the pace.

Our biggest worry, is that we are really running low on food so we are really hungry. We've got lots of snacks like nuts and saucisson, but not enough meals. The problem with double-handed sailing, is that it's easy to think the other person has done the packing! Plus its going to be a much longer race than we thought, we've still got another 12-13 days to go – may get in on the 14th May…so we are down to half rations…

You know you’ve been offshore for a while when you start to forget what day of the week it is. A bit like when you’re on holiday, but where we are now is actually far from a holiday. We are pushing really hard all the time in power reaching conditions and staying focused is crucial at a time like this and not ourselves get too relaxed and into the swing of things as it were. Since yesterday, for the first time in the race we’ve made big gains on the leader, Financo, having reduced his lead from over 80 miles to 55 from this morning’s positions, and now in 7th place! We are polling just ahead of Gildas Morvan and Jean le Cam now, racing Circle Vert, who have taken a more southerly option and have ended up in lighter winds than us. Obviously with Morvan being my big rival in the Route du Rhum it would be great to keep him behind us again until the finish but this is going to be far from easy since there is still 2000 miles left to go and anything can happen in this crazy sport dictated by what forces nature throws at us.