Telifonica Blue Leg Five Day 9

Ho hum, more of the same - surprise surprise! Reaching along the line, starting to come into the leaders now as they slow in the ITCZ so it’s only another 12 hrs or so of this stuff for us for a bit!

We haven't been able to download any weather data for 36 hours now due to a black spot in the coverage which has been a real frustration for us, but it has been the same for everyone I guess. We are managing to get some satellite images from a separate receiver and these are probably the most useful pieces of information coming into the doldrums, so we aren't running completely blind. We should start to get proper coverage back soon but it’s still a hit in the guts every time the ‘unable to connect’ error message pops up on the computer.

Only one drama to report today, around four hours ago everyone's heads popped up out of their bunks and noses started twitching with the smell of smoke. After 15mins or so of us all crawling around, it ended up being Gabri's (Gabriele Olivo/MCM) computer charging cable in the media desk which had burned out. Not much need for the media desk at the moment with no data access to the outside world so we have a bit of time to fix that and get back up to speed.

Last sched just came in and E4 has finally parked - so at last the doldrums are there - people were starting not to believe me! Time to go and start to make some miles up while we still have the breeze. We normally dread the light breeze that comes with this sort of transition, but to be honest, we are all looking forward to the change in routine and the opportunities that it presents.

Tom Addis - Navigator