36o19S 156o03E

The wind has suddenly gone light and fickle yet again and John is stuck on deck - trimming, trimming, trimming. So, in his absence, I will try to fill in for him - we apologise for the late log! It sometimes seems that BP Explorer is railroaded into its own private windless tunnel; repeatedly now, after painstakingly trimming and helming our way up behind the yacht in front (in this case Me to You), we have parked under cloud and lolled in the vacuum which generally accompanies the non-raining variety of these squat black formations which are busy sucking up all the air underneath them and halting us dramatically in our tracks. Me to You, meanwhile, have just this minute sailed clean away, opening up the distance which we closed, with hour after hour of effort, in one fell swoop. So it is a case of fight, fight, fight, then running 'bang' into a brick wall! One definition of madness is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It has been well proven that we must all have a touch of the lunatic in us to be here doing the race, but the competition is infectious and we cannot do anything except keep going. We will not give up. And hopefully sooner rather than later our windless tunnel will take a few steps to left or right! As we speak BG SPIRIT is steaming in behind us - we think (although in the dark it is hard to tell) with a spinnaker up. Let's hope that the wind returns before they get here.

We had our own special flotilla of supporters this afternoon, when we were fighting it out with Samsung to port, BG SPIRIT to starboard and Me to You dead ahead; an estimated 500 dolphins (many young amongst them) flanked us for an after-dinner spectacle in the form of an aquatic, arcing pair of wings on either beam. Their playfulness really was breathtaking, as dolphin after dolphin launched itself into the air, spinning and tipping over backwards, slapping the crystal surface with their tails, leaping in twos, threes, fours and fives and weaving a web of streamlined bubbles from bow to stern. This was certainly our best show to date. It was mesmerisingly beautiful and I will opt to take it as a sign to stay positive, keep jumping and doing all the tricks - we will get there in the end!