leg 2 Day 29 : 50 deg 18 S 157 deg 29 W

Sail starts Boxing Day! As I write this we have put exactly 5,136 miles behind us since Buenos Aires; there are 1,305.7 miles to go to the next waypoint (which happens to be a bar in Wellington) and the racing is so close that it might as well be the start, not the last week, of Leg 2. Throughout the previous watch, Spirit of Sark's 1.5 race spinnaker could be seen fluttering and straining neck and neck with our own as they flew along on the opposite gybe - sailing towards us, visible through the murk on the port beam. According to the scheds they are just 1.3 miles away - and the light-winds lottery is back. We have enjoyed this return to kiting conditions, but whilst we made not inconsiderable gains on both VAIO and Spirit of Sark during the afternoon, Samsung, BG SPIRIT and Barclays Adventurer caught up some miles on us at the same time. One mistake now and we could just as easily end in eighth position as on the podium; nerve-wracking times indeed! To dream of sailing our beautiful yacht over land rather than sea has been a common theme to several crew members' dreams aboard BP Explorer from time to time since before Portsmouth and, over our lamb googah at dinner, we connected this phenomenon with times of particular tension. Last night, amidst the familiar rustling sound of a spinnaker being packed inches from our sleeping bodies, Chris dreamt we were sailing down a narrow alleyway, the sides of which crowded in on us and tore our spinnaker pole to pieces. It doesn't take a genius to analyse that one. It would certainly have been nice to have begun our last week with a comfortable position on which to build, but as we fly towards another year and the opposite side of the world it remains all to play for. For the time being we have positioned ourselves well in relation to the high-pressure cell which currently dominates the fleet's routing decisions; we just have to hope that the situation stays this way. Naomi Cudmore