As dawn broke both GREAT Britain and Visit Seattle appeared through the fog under medium weight spinnaker undoing the lead we had built on them throughout the night. Catching us slightly on the back foot we managed to get the kite up and start the chase.

After a few hours it was apparent that they were faster than us on this particular point of sail in these conditions and Unicef also started chomping at our heels. I thought maybe an early gybe on the changing tide may just give us a little advantage but alas after a couple of gybes it was apparent we were maybe half an hour too early and didn't get quite the lift expected costing us a few miles which translated to race position meant going from fifth to tenth. Nice tekkers.

Anyway it wasn't too long after this that rounded Cape Wrath and hit a little acceleration zone. A little bit of over confident helming trying to get a speed record for the stage leading to a broach and by the time I had made it on deck the medium weight spinnaker had flogged itself to death. Unbelievably this was the first kite we have destroyed since London 45000 nautical miles ago and it went in a pretty big way. At one stage I thought we would be flying half of it from the mast head for a while but luckily one of the leach lines was still attached and we managed to wrestle it down and the bulk of the sail out of the water. Skipper Greg called up to gloat as he sailed past into tenth spot.

As we licked our wounds and prepped to launch our heavyweight spinnaker we noticed a small damage that had to be repaired before it went up delaying us another 30 minutes. Still the fleet was only five miles ahead and so when they all appeared to fall foul of the tide and a softening breeze we had room to sail up and over them. We now somehow unbelievably find ourselves trailing ClipperTelemed+ for second place having at one stage or another had all our sails up in the air overnight. Where will we be this time tomorrow?