48o53S 139o37E

Waves like rows of terraced houses surge towards us, sometimes from all directions. As they heave upwards from the ocean their crests curl and explode in the wind sending jets and eddies of spray into the cold grey air.

As we ride the back of these molten mountains, slowly rising to their peak, we can see the trough some 20 feet below us and look across this amazing liquid landscape. Most of the time we glide over the top and surf down the other side but then there are the times when we leap from the crest and with a bone-jarring crash fall to the trough below. Crawling and scrambling to the fore deck for sail changes we have to hold ourselves to the deck. If we are caught out by a wave we become temporally weightless and when the boat comes down, burying its bow in the surf, you come down with a crash and are swirled around on deck until the water drains over the sides. The girls in the snake pit peer out through squinted eyes and strain to hear the shouts of the crew as they fight to drop sails, hank on new ones and hoist them into the 20 and 30 knot winds. Meanwhile the helms fight a wheel that may not want to go where they want to go. We are all attached to the boat by lifelines. These are clipped to the wires running the length of BP Explorer.

This means we should never be further than the length of the line away from where we want to be, even if we do lose our grip and get washed down the deck by a wave - all in all it's pretty good fun really. It is a bit different below, we feel the crashes and bangs and the angle of heel makes getting around very tricky and tiring but the real worried looks come from the people visiting the heads. Without going into too much detail the lads have it easy for the most part but for the girls and the longer visits, sitting on the old china throne in these seas is something of an ordeal. A feeling of weightlessness followed by a sudden slamming during this time of personal reflection is a bit unnerving and reading the paper, if we had one, is certainly out of the question.

A look at the fleet positions show that through all the bad weather we are still holding our position of third place. Imagine It. Done. are currently in the lead with Barclays Adventurer on their heels but we are nibbling away at the miles that separate us and we've still got a long way to go. There is a huge difference to the morale of a watch when the Sun is out and today it has been. We are all in good spirits and though it's early days I think we feel much more positive about how we are going to cope with conditions that this leg will throw at us. Hey! On the bright side, if we skip one of the oh so tasty freeze-dried meals we may not need to make that visit to the heads every day.
John Bass