29' 2S 11' 15E

What are we up to? I hear you cry. Well its back to cat and mouse in the Atlantic. At present BP Explorer is aiming at a waypoint on the equator at the approximate position of a strange island Penedos St Pedro and St Paulo which is located right on the equator. This is a mark of the course and must be left to port. Traditionally it has paid off to be out on the left of the line as you go up to the equator and without this mark, some of us would probably have drifted even further to the left. Set against this is the South Atlantic High, the middle of which contains little wind. This pushes you right off the line. So go right and avoid possible light winds but possibly miss out later. Go left and look good for later and get caught by light winds in the process. Decisions, decisions.

Last night as Team Stelmar, Spirit of Sark and BP Explorer battled together under a weak trough line in the wind, Out to the left of the line SAIC La Jolla and Samsung sneaked past to take the top two positions. They look good today but will they suffer later?

The pattern for tropical weather is steady winds during the day and difficult changeable conditions at night. Between 0000 and 0500 the tops of clouds cool off and cool air descends from then creating rain and squalls. This changeable and rapid increase in wind threatens to blow spinnakers to pieces and with it race chances. Thus the night time is when we tend to work the hardest and last night was no exception. At one point during the night we dropped our flanker as winds built to a dangerous level. Out to our left Spirit of Sark choose to bear away rather than drop the kite. This forced them to run down on us and at one point you could have thrown a tennis ball between us. Rather than risk a collision they shot behind us at a rapid speed and were last seen heading over the horizon, where they remain to starboard. These hurried spinnaker drops can often be quite scary affairs. The crew hurriedly assemble beneath the boom and attempt to claw down a piece of cloth that would cover a tennis court. At one point in the last 24hours the spinnaker got the better of the team and threatened to pull a number of the crew overboard as the flanker blew away in a particularly gusty drop. Thankfully they were clipped on at the time.

So from a skippers perspective, there is much to keep you awake at night and my body and brain are slowly beginning to accept the broken sleep patterns that come with tropical spinnaker work.