“Basically, decided not to push too hard and to be conservative. Sailing with one reef and the genoa at the moment. Got a lot of sleep [ie 2.5 hours!!]. Don’t feel great right now, but on the whole it was necessary, so that’s been quite cool.

“Had a bit of a drama yesterday evening just before midnight the main rudder cassette kicked up and broke two of the fuses. I heard a noise, I couldn’t work out what it was, went all over the boat couldn’t see anything and this was about two hours previous and then there was another noise and that’s when I saw the box had kicked up.

“But what I think may have actually happened was that maybe in the rough stuff at the beginning, the rudder had been hit hard enough to loosen it and actually stretched the fuses a little bit and then just as we were sailing along one bust then the other one bust. I couldn’t see any marks on the rudder and I replaced them. A pain in the arse job!

“On the latitude of Finisterre and sailing into this depression now. Bit windier – all on – sea getting bigger now. Back into strong wind. The breeze didn’t go as light as we thought it would, average speed went down overnight quite a lot – 2 hrs at 17 knots, couple at 15 knots, bit rubbish – but now we appear to be off again.

“Went through ridge of the high last night. Made a conscious decision not to put the gennaker up. Probably would have had it up for about six hours so decided not to go without it. You know, in retrospect I could have managed, but with 20 knots, gusting 23 knots and averaging 17 knots speed over ground its okay. I am in a different mindset…

Expecting wind to increase quite rapidly today and tonight.”