Skipper's log: Michael Ferguson (Ireland), Ariel II (IMOCA)

Its been 2 weeks since the race started and we are looking to finally escape the Doldrums. We got as close to 28miles from Pip and 35 miles from Alexis last night but the bungee cord between us finally snapped in the early hrs of this morning with Pip and then Alexia being realesed from the wet windless torture that i hope they had to suffer last night too. Good wriggling girls!
As for last night for us it was one of my worst night sailing experiences ever. Biscay is wee buns compared to last nights action. Heavy and I mean heavy rain was almost a constant with little boat speed meaning that one of us had to drive from outside. Sounds fine right? Wrong! Between the rain you are changing sails sweating then comes the rain and a cool down draft from above too, so one minute too hot and the next too cold. Then comes footwear. You run up bare foot to help furl a big sail. Your feet then never dry because the next time you run up in shoes then they are soaked. Sounds like I’m moaning and I am. Again I just think that I’m lucky to experience these Doldrums that you hear about and now I have my own stories to tell. Hopefully as I write you are gone but not forgotten! Wind has just gone to ESE and we are moving. 
  Dee Caffari used to skipper this boat when she was called Aviva and Haribo was a massive feature on board. Its been the go too bag for the Doldrums for me too. Thread bare mainsails seem another feature this boat loves too!????
 As for other things that happened yesterday we had about 50 smallish Dolphins doing some of the best jumping I ‘ve ever seen and then early afternoon I got to witness one of the rare things you get to see out here. A whale did a massive breach about half a mile to windward . There must have been about 5 around the suface and I got Ari up to prove I wasn’t seeing things. 
Next up should be the Equator at some point tomorrow. Its nice to be closing in on having 3 digits to the finish instead of 4 too. Life at an angle begins again now for next couple of days. At least this means no sign of the 3 lemons on the B&G’s!

 I also now know the best way to descibe our mainsail and In the race village some boats had mesh branded mainsails up daily. If any one is looking one we may have one free of charge in about 5 days time!
Hope everyones had a good weekend and Congrats to the boys on Apivia who finished ????in the early hrs. Great work fellas!

Mikey