Life onboard Kingfisher at the moment is wet and wild as Ellen reports in her daily diary:

“Well the weather this morning is very damp and humid. We’re pounding along at 14 knots, with a fairly horrible swell as we leave this second depression. The sky above us is once again very grey, and the air around us is cold and damp. Spirit’s onboard are high, though conditions have been difficult during the night.

We tacked shortly after midnight – to head WSW, and since then the breeze had been slowly decreasing to what we expected on this next stage of the race. Last night was one of those very dark and rough nights, the sea strewn with phosphorescence and the wave crests lit up vividly against the blackness.

Our tack was one of those nightmare tacks when it takes forever to shift the weight within the boat, then everything goes wrong on deck, including big waves swamping the cockpit and the daggerboard jamming. For the amount of wind we had – we certainly weren’t short of seaway.

The big drama of the night though was when the Mark/Nick shared gloves went tumbling unseen into the bilge and came out with somewhat ringing linings. Thank goodness for the generator and it’s on-tap flow of hot air.

This race reminds me so much of the Europe 1 start and the Quebec St. Malo. Despite the greyness of the North Atlantic there is a certain sense of the wild up here. The only parallel I can draw is that of the southern ocean. They are at the two corners of the earth, they both see ice bergs regularly and they are both a challenge that we’ve faced before.”

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