Day 13 : 21deg 29min N 20deg 57min W

Day dawns with a hazy sky promising yet another scorcher and BP Explorer is still at the easterly end of a long line (over 200 miles wide) across which the 12-strong Challenge fleet is strung out. Hour by hour we strain our necks to get ahead as we charge towards the Cape Verde islands, which we should reach late tomorrow night. Morocco long gone over our left shoulder, we now lie 220 miles to the west of Mauritania, 1,400 miles from the Equator and with a wake of 2,150 miles behind our stern. So we are roughly one-third of the way to Buenos Aires. Just four thousand odd miles to go until that cold, cold beer; with the beads of condensation running down the bottle.

Meanwhile, we are now officially in tropical waters and as the competition hots up with positions changing by the day and hour, our sauna grows ever steamier. At least we have had plenty of entertainment to distract us from the heat. In a bid to make the most of every change in windspeed, we have been through our spinnaker wardrobe more times than I care to mention. Peeling, packing, peeling packing, the routine is endless and very hard work. At least during tea-and-jaffa-cake breaks we have had the pleasure of some new companions. For days it struck us as odd that despite all that life teeming beneath us (to a depth of 4,000 metres today), the ocean gave the appearance of being something of a wilderness. But with the warmer waters have come many visitors. After the wonderful sperm whale (with a very bad case of halitosis) came a brace of squid on the foredeck (too insubstantial for even the smallest of starters to serve 18), numerous storm petrels wheeling above the waves and a school of dolphins which provided us with a magical midnight show. Skipping and circling effortlessly (and surely just for fun), they trailed shimmering silver-green streaks of phosphorescence behind them at lightening speed, like constellations of underwater stars astride their backs. Far less picturesque are the insects which no-one expected! As dusk fell yesterday we began to find our foredeck being used as a landing strip for some very odd locust-like creatures. Salmon-pink and speckled with light brown, they are around five inches in length and would certainly be an ominous sight in large numbers. Not surprisingly our naturalist's library is somewhat lacking on board so any ideas on their identity would interest us!