An exciting end to the race. Nova Scotia had just pipped us to the first gate, and we spent the next day edging past them again. Some great helming, & a good sail change meant that we were ahead & gaining slowly.

Then with around 40 miles to go to the race finish, 4 boats were within a few miles of each other battling for 2nd & 3rd place; the weirdest thing being that 2 of them were a hundred miles away, so we had no idea whether they were in better or worse winds than us, & therefore how well we were doing.

So we put everthing into it - helming & triming as hard as we could. The miles ticked away slowly, but eventually it was all over & we just had to wait for the results to come though.

First it looked as though we had made third, but then after some minor controversy, it became clear that New York had made a mistake in reporting their position & we had beaten them to 2nd by a mere 9 mins after 2000 nmiles!

The boys are taking part in a Central American-style moustache growing competition with Liverpool, & they are coming along nicely - though when you catch them on a dark night it is a little scary!

Last night was pretty cool. The galaxies were the brightest I have ever seen, & the phosphoresence was out in force, with little lights flashing all over the sea, & lit up dolphins swooshing around. I even think there were a few neon coloured aliens out there!

Not too much to write about at the moment. We are doing some beautiful downwind sailing down the coast of Mexico. Lovely sunny days, and clear starry nights - a bit like cruising rather than racing.

Orion is still out looking after us every night, which is nice. The boat routine goes on as ever - 4 hours on, 4 off, sleeping, eating, and sailing; but life on board is significantly nicer when the boat is flat, and you are not being thrown around.

Santa Cruz was another great stop, with a lovely yacht club looking after us. Also spent a few days in San Francisco, which was cool. Went to Alcatraz and the museum of modern art. Was great to be in a big city again, and i even managed to fit some karaoke in!

We left Santa cruz a couple of days ago,and got off to a great start - first over the line and first to the first mark. We were then accompanied by a large pod of dolphins and seals as we set of down the coast (although for a while i thought the seals were some weird deformed dolphins with no dorsal fins!). Nice to see some wildlife again.

We have great weather at the moment - beautiful clear nights - though a bit cold considering we are off the coast of Mexico - nice sunny days, and some great kite action. Apparently our boat was also in the FT (not sure why!) and is on posters in the tube advertising the next race - so look out for us!

This last leg has been hard as our race was pretty much over halfway through when we got becalmed. And when it is cold and wet it is a little gutting knowing that the others have all arrived.

We are also rapidly becoming the worst boat in the fleet with 3 last places out of the last 4, and it is hard not to become a little down. The cold weather and constant beating hasn't helped, but we should be in Santa Cruz tomorrow, and things always seem better in the bar!

An odd few days. First we had no wind and flopped around for two days. Then when the wind came, it came in large amounts. so we went through all of the sails one by one as it got windier and windier; all in around 3 hours.

We hanked on one sail and put it up. Then it got a bit windier so we dropped that one & put up the next. Then it got a little more windy so we dropped that one & put up an even smaller one. Craziness!