Leg 8 : race 12 day 15 Woken at 5.30 up on deck for an hour then came down to help sail repair. Started off cold then around 10 the sun came out. It was Caroline's birthday Jimmy had made a banner. Sarah made a cake and Vitaly and Carl decorated it. All sang happy birthday to her. A good happy moment. Wrote a crew diary worked on sail repair all day. Popped up on deck a couple of times just to get some air. Sun was out sea calm and not a lot of wind. Saw a whale...

Leg 8: race 12 : day 14 Woken at 5.30 it's damp and cold outside. Yankee and staysail up now beating into the wind. Helped to wool the code 3 then got the code 1 out to repair. Bilges were full up with water so emptied them. Had not covered many miles in the night due to lack of wind. But now we are heeled over but still not going very fast! Just want to get there now. Everyone fed up with course extension. Saw Ireland ( land at last! ) pity not going straight ...

Leg 8: race 12 day 13 Woken at 5.30 we are still on New York time so it's actually 10.30 in uk. Cloudy outside still have code 3 up. The wind had died down so bobbing along. Heard we had overtaken mission performance so now in 8th place. Derry lmax have nearly finished the course extension and are about 300 miles ahead of us. Gutted we haven't done better! I helped sophie and Caroline with sail repair of the code 2. Had a look at the chart we are getting clos...

Leg 8 : race 12 : day 12 Woken at 5.30 then on deck for 6am. The code 1 was up, worked out that we had taken 30 hours to repair it. It was good to see it flying but sadly an hour before we were due to come off shift it popped ! Not the repair but a new tear so soul destroying after all our hard work! Quickly got it down and put the code 3 up. Took around 10 minutes to do this ! Finished shift at 10. Came down below washed up and washed my hair / the water was co...

Leg 8 : race 12 : day 11 Carl woke me at 7 am. Couldn't believe how long I had slept for. He had been on deck since 5.30am as the hallard on the spinnaker had snapped so tigers watch helped the dragons get it down. Sadly it got ripped so more sail repair ! Helped sophie to machine the code 1 and we finally had it fixed by noon and bagged it up ready to be flown again. I now know how sophie must feel every time a spinnaker gets torn, all the hard work repairing...