"Last night (a GMT night), which is actually my day time down here, was pretty good. The 24 hours prior to that were really quite tough. The sea has been rough and disorganised with strong gusting winds of around 30 knots or so. I hardly slept at all and was exhausted. Today things are still pretty rough, but a bit more manageable and I got a bit of rest and am feeling a lot better. It looks like the winds should die down quite a bit from tomorrow.
The boat has been going fast and I am happy to have put some more miles between myself and the group of boats behind me so I am now over 1000 miles ahead. I have also started to pull out some miles on Bernard Stamm. It is easy in these situations to get sucked into racing with the guy next to you and forgetting about the bigger picture so I am concentrating on sailing my own race. I passed the half way mark of this race at 4.28am (GMT) on the 21st of December, so there is still a very long way to go!"