42 58n 61 00w

It has been a gentle start to leg 6 and at present we are reaching with the spinnaker up making around 10kts straight for the waypoint. We are just on the edge of the Grand Banks continental shelf and keep encountering little pockets of current - sometimes 0.5kt with us and annoyingly for a while Tuesday afternoon, over 1kt against us. The fleet is spread out north to south with just a few miles separating first and tenth. This will be another very tight leg with minutes between the yachts at the finish.

We have maps of the Gulf Stream which lies to the south and the warm water eddies which spin off it. Then there is the cold water Labrador current that lies to the north and opposes us. There are a number of good websites which detail all of this, and maps downloaded before we left are spread all over the chart table. (try putting in rads/tudelft in google) Its even possible to buy up to £1,000 worth of Gulf Stream information from experts in the field (we have not). Needless to say that while we encountered 1 kt of current against us, the maps clearly showed that we should be enjoying half a knot from astern - doh! I guess nobody told the Gulf Stream.

We are all glad to be on our way back across the Atlantic and me in particular. I had a lousy time in Boston. I spent the first week worrying about the protest and the second week dealing with the fallout. I very much hope that the results of the competition are not decided by the few points that we were deducted. What was good was seeing my son Jasper do his 'Frankenstein walk' as he mastered the art of life on two feet.

Laura said to me that ''when we leave Boston you will be able to hear the wheels skidding on the gravel as we pull out of the car park'' I knew exactly what she meant. We went out to the start meaning business. While others took a more relaxed approach we put the sails up early and with the Boston skyline behind us, timed a number runs to the start. Normally I take a modest approach to leg starts, but this time I felt it would be nice to show the fleet that our heads were up and we were back in business. We hit the line with seconds to spare and lead the fleet out of Boston. It was a great lift for us all, meaningless in the long run, but still a magic little moment.

Tactically it is slow stuff at the moment. We are reaching along in relatively constant winds and there may be a slight advantage for the boats to the north. We hope to get little lifts from the current being slightly south. If it would only co-operate. A lot of the small changes that you see may well be due to boats running into little eddies. What we like on this boat is change. Putting sails up and down and reacting to changing circumstances is like going through the gears of a car. Both watches are fast and proficient now and we look forward to the weather livening up a bit.