A stressed Ellen this morning as breeze activity under cloud mass made for difficult conditions. A couple of hours later, Ellen was sailing in more consistent breeze – the highs and lows of solo sailing…

“I’m nervous still. The wind’s all over the place. It’s just shifted through 120 degrees. It’s just in the clouds but it shouldn’t be like this. The breeze is due to die but until I can get out of this cloud mass, its going to be like this…its gone from 8 knots to 25 knots and that makes it very hard onboard.

“We are heading all over the place. Not good for our positioning on the Canary Islands ahead of us. Right now our boat speed is just 8 knots and I’m heading for the islands. I can’t leave the boat for 5 minutes without something happening. Hope it’s going to stablise soon.

“I’ve got a dry mouth, I’m not eating properly yet and not totally got my head into this. I’m going to try and fix the leak on the fresh water tank to make myself feel happier! The problem is that with the wind shifting all the time, I don’t want to get stuck down below, as I keep having to rush on deck to trim the sheets.”