Swiss skipper Bernard Stamm on Cheminees Poujoulat has been struggling over the last couple of days to escape an area of high pressure in the Southern Ocean. Consequently he lost out to second-placed Kojiro Shiraishi on Spirit of Yukoh who yesterday was just 754 miles astern.

This morning however, the latest figures show that Stamm is back on track since he passed the Kerguelen Islands and has, over the last 24 hours, gained nearly 100 miles and is currently making 11.2kts.

Mike Golding and Alex Thomson continue limping towards South Africa with their broken mast aboard Ecover, although their progress has slowed due to lack of wind and having to beat north. Reporting from the boat yesterday Golding said: “The angles are not good at the moment and the wind has dropped quite a bit so we are just taking small hitches at a time but getting there slowly. It’s a bit of a struggle.

Further down the fleet in fifth place Sir Robin Knox Johnston is starting to feel the cold commenting in his log this morning: “?the temperature on deck this morning is 16C, and of course the south-westerly wind is the cool one in the Southern Hemisphere.”