Skipper's log: Alex Thomson (Britain), skipper Hugo Boss (IMOCA)

Hi everybody. Well I finally get a chance to make a video. It’s been pretty tiring out here for the first days, lots of little niggles and stuff. Not quite right. But still, very happy with how we’re doing. We had a storming VMG, or reach, out of the Channel. It was pretty amazing. Startingly fast, very happy with that. And then at Ushant we had some sail damage. One of our reaching sails, the tack loops of it ripped off the sail for some reason so that was a bit of a pain and hence we lost a load of miles and basically it stopped us from following the south route hence our push the west, which may still work out. It’s certainly not a forgone conclusion that it’s going to be wrong. The boats to the south are going to have to cross a reach, quite a light reach of high pressure, so very light winds. For us, we’ll be crossing the similar reach around about Saturday and it should be easier for us and it should be a very good angle, wind angle - a fast run down to the equator. Neal and I are both very tired. Not much sleep but we’re not in bad shape. We’re about to get stuck into this sail repair. And, well, happy days – we’re still in the race so pretty happy.