Good afternoon sports fans.

Well here we go again. Four hours on, four hours off. Life has quickly returned to its usual routine aboard Ericsson 4 and after a couple of days getting into the swing of things, our bodies have adjusted back to our watch system and the time is flying by.

Matters are also made better by the fact that we now have a decent strength breeze and are making reasonable speed towards Fernando de Noronha. A couple of active cumulus clouds kept us busy last night but seem to have done us no harm as we managed to gain some ground on Telefónica  Blue and open up a few miles on the chasing Ericsson 3, Puma and Telefónica  Black, with whom we had spent most of yesterday.

Conditions are pretty warm and humid down below but our trusty bedside fans are serving us well. Also, I dare not complain about the heat as it’s looking like near freezing conditions for the approach into Boston. I personally would much rather be hot with warm sea temperatures than bitterly cold with water around the 5 degree Celsius mark that we are expecting. As such I will save my whinging for later this leg.

The only real situation aboard has been the scent of Stu's (Stu Bannatyne) socks that has turned to near gag inducing. Quite an achievement considering that we have only been at sea for 50 odd hours! Hopefully we have rectified the situation by banishing the socks to above decks and getting Stu to do some work on the foredeck in the hope that the extra water up there might give his shoes a much needed flushing.

That’s all for now.

Ryan Godfrey - bowman