46' 52N 26' 52W

Tactically we have become one of the southerly boats - not what we planned. Tuesday night in varied conditions we all slid north, but most of the boats did some more spectacular sliding than us! There is 48 hours of strong downwind sailing and it remains to be seen which boat gets the better wind/sea combination. For the time being all seems well.

We are rolling along downwind with the No1 yankee poled out and full main. The wind is almost dead astern and every hour sees around 11miles knocked of the total distance to La Rochelle - easy miles.

This point of sail is a pleasure for a skipper, because its lowrisk and relatively high reward in terms of distance sailed. The poled out no1 means you roll a bit, but it is what is known as 'bullet proof'' i.e. you can have quite high deviations from the helmsman but not break anything. The onlydisadvantage is that the rolls dip the boom into the water. When this occurs it is forced upwards and this creates a lot of strain on the rig. Two people have to sit in the snake pit area holding onto ropes and release them each time the boom takes a hit. This is easy stuff though. The net result is that I am relaxed, so are the crew. Our only fear is that some 'uber crew' are able to fly the kite in conditions that we are not and are powering away from us.

All this is a far cry from the conditions this afternoon when we dropped the kite (flanker). The trouble with downwind sailing in 30kts of breeze is thatit is very fast - right up until the point when you loose control of theboat and either break one of the crew or the spinnaker. As the boat edges up to the outside of the 'control envelope' there is a lot of nervy conversation between helm, skipper and trimmer.

''Are you in control or is the boat in control of you?'' is the question I ask the helms. Often toward the end I will either be on the helm or standing by the helmsman's side as we surf and plough down the back of waves at speeds of up to 19kts. The crew will have been looking at the numbers as well as I have, and they know by the feel of the boat that it's all starting to get edgy. They will be anxious to get the kite down too - they just don't want to break it - no way do we want to have to hand stitch a spinnaker together at this stage of the game. Plus pulling down a flanker in a heavily rolling boat is frightening. Last leg a crewman on Team Stelmar was injured when he became entangled in a rope. We have had crew dragged towards the rail, only coming up short by their safety harnesses.

This afternoon was no exception, the wind rose and with it the seas and in the end we got caught by two big swells that pushed the boat into two massive rolls. Holger, the helm at the time, kept his nerve and held the boat on course and the rest of us shouted and cursed and hauled the flanker down out of the sky and into the cockpit. Once we had poled out the no1 it was all smiles again, the relief causes a nice positive feeling to flood around the boat.

''We did it - the flanker lives!'' The kettle goes on, the helms relax and we look forward to some easy miles.

Sitting on the back of the boat some time later I stared at the wake boiling and churning astern, as if released from some unseen lock gate. Many images of the trip passed through my mind and the noise of the rushing water smoothed away some creases. The volume made conversation difficult - it sounded to me as if an infinite number of crisp autumn leaves had left their branches in unison and were passing through a forest in a sustained russssshhhhh.