Day 17 : 9' 15N 27' 56W

By nightfall we shall be half way to that cold beer! Some 700 miles off the coast of northern Sierra Leone , BP Explorer is now entering the doldrums, and the humidity is increasing hour by hour. This morning we find ourselves
far from becalmed, however, but moving along in 12 knots of breeze, now from the south-east. We are making the most of this wind to eke out every ounce of boat speed and focus 100% on clawing back distance between ourselves and
the leaders. It seems that there have not been any major alterations in the positions over the past 24 hours. The night did herald a couple of sudden changes more locally, though, including the aforementioned shift to this new wind direction - one minute we were bowling along with our spinnaker up, the next we were faced with headwinds, a rapid kite drop, and yankee and staysail hoist. Ploughing along close-hauled, we were later hit by a squall which saw the wind increase from 13 knots to 30 in the space of four
minutes. The on-watch depowered the sails to ride out the squall and lapped up the torrent of refreshing rain which came blatting down on the deck; the free clothes rinse being welcomed as a happy accident given that the fabric
wash ran out yesterday (still with two-and-a-half sweaty weeks to go!) This commodity we now add to the list of the 'thoroughly depleted' - which thus far includes stocks of ketchup, HP sauce, salt (we are preparing to harvest
from the guardrails) and peppermint tea. Below decks it seems that the heat is giving rise to new levels of both invention and madness. Silk sleeping-bag liners have been found to make wonderful saris (togas for the men), and a new cunning, if not elegant design has been fashioned by one of
the shorter-armed crew members (yours truly) for getting every last drop of water clear of the bilges.

Meanwhile, shouts of disgust could be heard from on deck this morning as Chris Talpo took delivery of his morning coffee. Hitherto pretty tolerant of the boat instant given that he heralds from Turin, his patience, it seemed, finally ran out today. ' I just cannot take this any more', he declared dramatically, throwing his nose in the air and the goo over the side. Down in the saloon, Richard turned to some amused eavesdroppers and confessed, holding up his ingredients: 'Oh dear, it may look the same but this is mashed potato not milk powder'. 'Cup-a-spud' does not look set to be a winner.