Leg 4: 29th July

Position at 1800 local time, 29th July 2009, 47.52N, 37.28W

As I write this blog, we are currently surfing down 10 foot rolling waves and touching on 11 knots of speed through the water. We have regained first position as we have closed in by 40 nautical miles on our closest rival, Peter Von Danzig, and are now just 180 miles behind on the water. With our boat speed still high we hope that we are still closing in on them.

Blue watch experienced some massive waves in the early hours of the morning whilst changing sails to cope with the rough conditions of force 8 winds. This provided a bad nights sleep for most of red watch, today's mother watch. Blue watch also suffered after this ordeal with many of them having to come below to change out of their sodden clothes for the remaining three and a half hours of the watch. The rest of the day has been mostly downwind sailing and are directly on course which has provided some fairly nice conditions down below with the continual rolling from the heavy ocean rollers. Then on the early morning watch Watch Officer Simon Turvey started complaining about having a wet bottom even though wearing brand new waterproofs. There were also cries from the whole watch (especially Rupert) about how they have had wet bums since the start of the watch at 8pm (it is now roughly 2.30am) while on the foredeck changing sails and that he should grow some and accept it. We also had to endure Tom's un-suppressing moans of how he wants fish and chips then wondering whether they would serve a chicken portion with those chips as well. Oh and also Irish Liam's mood after suffering a dive has now come out of the trough and is pretty happy, possibly due to the increase in size and variety of the moral board and dance music while on watch.

As the current pressure system passes over us, we have the last of the strong winds and we are looking forward to the new incoming low pressure. This will hopefully bring us some more wind to help us on our voyage.

The ships morale board has now spread across the entire boat to cope with the rationing of tea, coffee and hot chocolate due to us realizing we have been using too much gas. In addition to this, we only have six days worth of happy hour beer left and have run out of nutella. The food situation is, however, not all bad. We are continuing to experiment with the menu and today we enjoyed a cinnamon and current loaf.

White watch had an awful night watch weather wise as we were rained on all watch and even the most waterproof of jackets suffered from severe seepage, however despite the rain the wind was high which made sure good progress was made. Mark has been working on a kite made of bin bags, pencils, tape and fishing line, it is currently nearing completion and we hope to test it when the wind eases.( maiden flight was made but fell from the sky into the sea to be never seen again) Our 8-12.30 watch was fairly busy as we spent some time experimenting with the mizzen staysail, and working out whether port or starboard tack was favoured as we moved towards our next waypoint. Enjoying a sing song now before dinner and then we have two watches tonight

Dom De'ath - Red Watch
Steve Jackson - White Watch