Fours hours into day 39 of our attempt, 10:07 am. U.T.C.

Pitch black in the early hrs of the local time morning here. I'm on stand by and we have just peeled to our code 0. as the wind has again dropped below 3-4 kts. Current boat speed a whopping 2.3 kts. Its been the same story for the past 24 hrs - going no where at very little speed. Loosing hours, days to the record time and my sanity if this continues!

I'm quite sure, even positive your weekend must have been better than mine!

Saturday, whilst sailing in particularly sloppy sea way created by the Low pressure system advancing from behind, our main sail "head board car" parted from the mast ripping a section of mainsail track with lock system from the mast at first reef point, sheering all eighteen m10 and m12 bolts that were fastening it in place and twisting the remaining track at its break points. This boat just keeps on breaking! This being the second major break since our forestay incident before Cape town that could potentially force us to abandon our attempt. As you might well imagine, this is not something you need to contend with in an area like this, especially not at the weekend! Reduced to sailing with two reefs in our mainsail and Solent, I've spent most of my weekend 100 ft in the air repairing our mast in what I can only describe as shit weather being battered and bruised, swung like a rag doll at the end of a stick, it was hard enough to hang on in the rough sea way let alone effect a repair you'd normally carry out in a machine shop. However it all works again now after spending 20 hrs or so in the air whilst Mike worked his magic on deck recreating a one and a half meter section of mast track from what can only be described as scrap metal., I feel today as if I've just played a rugby match, I'm tired and soar and with quite a short fuse!

Even with everything sailing wise mechanically working, the weather/center of Low Pressure has caught up with us now, partially as a result of going slower than we normally might and we've had our slowest day yet, stuck in 2-8 kts of wind. At least we don't have to stop when we round the Horn to make repairs in the Falklands, that would be a killer! The up-shot of all this is we're still 550 miles from Cape Horn and have lost two of our four day lead over Orange at our present location, all in the past four days. Just seems like we can't get around this corner, watching the hours and days slip away which we've gained is just horrible but there's not allot we can do to change the wind and weather - its not supposed to be like this, it is Cape Horn and the southern Ocean after all, the windiest part of the world! Anyway - I hope I'm back here shortly with bette############################

Just called on deck Boats broke again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!