The Southern Ocean’s a busy place at this time of year, especially when you take a look at the tracks of the Virtual Regatta. Here’s a snapshot of leg 5 in which the problems of calling water at Cape Horn become more apparent.

Finishing the top 10,000 (in a fleet of 180,000), the good news for me was that I’d finally finished leg 5 of the Volvo Ocean Race and could put the online obsession to one side, at least for a couple of weeks. The bad news was that a family function in the closing stages of the race cost me over 7,000 places in the final approach to the finish where my position plummeted from 2,800 to 9,800 in a matter of hours.

I’ve been told to grow up.