James, how was your surfing trip? Based on what I saw I can imagine you
had a ball. Must have been nice to have a break albeit I can imagine you
missed Emily and Georgie enormously. I guess that was you first time
without them?

Mum, how was your flight? Hope you made it back to the UK and to home
easily. It must be tough switching straight back to uni mode. Looking
back I’m not sure that you had the rest you needed in Cape Town so
apologies for that.

I have just come off mother watch and am taking a short break before having
to go back up on deck. Mother watch is far from a break especially if we
are heading into wind. Bracing your ab muscles and holding on with one hand
for 12 hours straight is tough. My leg muscles may have disappeared
(surprisingly disgruntled about that) but my tummy muscles are alive and
well under my porridge and nuttella tummy. I can’t wait to get back to the
gym (and a hair dresser, and beauty salon…) after this.

You may have read in Greg’s blogs (?) that we have had a comms outage on
the boat including all our email, chart and weather plotting software.
Very frustrating. Greg has managed to sort a compromise solution so we do
not have weather and email but not the technology that tells us the optimal
routing. Other boats will therefore have a significant advantage over us
this leg.

It is amazing that we are a week in to this already. It has been a
physically tough week and I’m pretty exhausted. Despite being in the
roaring forties we haven’t yet had the very cold temperatures and rolling
waves. I’m keeping thick socks and my mid-layer jacket as a cosy reserve.

We have just had the scheds out and we’re now in 5th, a mile behid GB. So
frustrating because we’re all trying really hard and have become quite a
=well oiled team. Hey ho.

Otherwise all is good. Oz still seems like a long way away. We had the
big figure change last night to 3 on the mileage remaining which is great.
I daren’t look at a chart though because we’re still so close to SA.

Lots of love to everyone especially to Dani and Alex. I really can’t wait
to meet their handsome little man.

Just so you are aware I have not received any emails you sent before
yesterday afternoon because the computer had to be wiped. Sorry.

Massive love to all.

Lucy xxx