Twenty-four-year-old Barnaby Edwards is among one of the youngest teams currently sailing the ARC. Edwards and team purchased Makathea – a 30-year-old, 41ft Dufour Sortilege – last year with a vision to take a year out and see the world. Here’s the first diary report from Edwards positioned at 164 26.05N 16.47W earlier today.

“We were lucky to arrive at the start line after having the new forestay and furling gear ready at 12.20 on Sunday afternoon. The last 4 days in Las Palmas were very stressful and emotional making the experience all the more rewarding. We were sure we wouldn’t be leaving until Tuesday.

The start was somewhat slow but at least this helped us settle in without the worry of hitting any other competitors. We had a resonable start but decided to motor for two hours to make some progress past the island.

The wind picked up and we have now been running with the spinnaker for 19 hours, top speed 10.4 kts. We are heading approx 235 degrees and the sea state is only slight to moderate. Good considering winds have reached 28 kts through the night. The crew haven’t slept so well in the these conditions but morale is good and we still have a yacht just ahead. Dolphins swam close to the boat during the night as did a huge tanker, not so much fun.”