Onboard Atlantik FT it is another light wind day with the spinnaker up, getting sunburnt now and moving ever slowly towards the Caribbean but gybing directly downwind. These are the hardest days. I find, making incredibly slow progress whilst other boats to the south are in completely different conditions and hurtling towards the finish. Overnight, the Concarneau-St Barts boys ate a massive 100 miles out of our advantage in 12 hours! (This was the boat which decided to do a flier to the south after Madeira.) We weren't completely stopped either, we managed to gain 4 miles on the leader who's just 62 miles ahead of now us and still heading the northern group. We are lying in 6th place as we haven't managed to lose Group Celeos to our derriere yet. Yesterday evening they crawled past us and we are now about a mile behind them going at exactly the same speed, so we have been constantly tweaking and trimming the boat, day and night, to try and get every ounce of a knot out of this slow bus.

Well after 5 days of slogging upwind across the Atlantic the wind is miraculously going aft and we’re just prepared the spinnaker for hoist on this calm morning where dawn breaks noticeably later each day as we head west. Incredibly, despite our painfully slow progress an recent inability to point anywhere near the direction of the Caribbean, the northern pack of boats that we’re amongst is still holding a good lead on the boats down in the south. This looks set to change though as we have a very light couple of days ahead of us whereas the southerners have reached the trade winds now and will be blasting downwind in entirely different conditions to the finish. Right now though its still wide open. We have about 200 mile on the leader of the southern pack, Circle Vert, and we could well get more wind than forecast to help us to a strong finish before the boats from the south stream in, all the skippers with great tans I’m sure, unlike us who have seen mostly rain and squalls over the last couple of days. Yesterday we got hit by a 35kt squall and absolutely torrential rain, and all we could think about was the guys in the south cruising effortlessly downwind, spinnaker up, with far greater speed. One thing is for sure, we feel as though we've earned and deserve a good result much more than these guys!