Fabien Delahaye (France) - Leyton (Class40)

The sun is with us, so that’s nice. Unlike yesterday, which was a bit of a catastrophic day, where we were trying to leave a front that moved with us, with squalls of up to 45 knots. Since then, the wind has calmed down, the sea too. We have 20 knots under a gennaker at a fast angle. It’s rather good timing to pass through the ridge (of high pressure) without too much trouble. We’ll be at Madeira tonight, and we’ll see how we negotiate the island. We musn’t lose our western separation.

Aïna Enfance and Avenirhad passed us, but we came back on them all night and morning. I don’t think we have had exactly the same sails and we took back 20 miles. That's the good news. The bad is Crédit Mutuel is really going very fast, I don’t know how they are doing it. Visibly, their boat has big potential and they can manage speeds that we don’t know how to do. Since the start from Le Havre, we have rested a lot because we never have two on the deck. We take it in turns every three hours whatever the conditions except yesterday in the squalls,where it was necessary to make a two-person manoeuvre.