First of all we on E3 want to send our thoughts to our teammate Tony Mutter who has to retire from this leg because of a knee injury. We really feel bad for his sake and the crew who has to sail on without him.

On Ericsson 3 we are still working 100 percent. Two days ago we were more than 25 miles behind Ericsson 4 and yesterday evening we passed them. We could actually see them visually passing behind us.

We are very pleased with our position for the moment. We gybed south outside the Cape Verde islands seven hours ago and now we are concentrating on not being covered by the wind shadow of Cap Verde.

Latest report told that we have made big gains on Puma, who is now 29 miles in front of us. It's a long distance but everything can happen. The Doldrums are coming closer and it seems it's going to be a parking lot.

Because of that this is still a very open race. The wind will shift a lot in the coming days. Some boats can come with wind from behind whilst another parks up completely, just like in Gibraltar when we were leading with 30 miles and suddenly started going backwards because of the current. At the same time, our opponents were closing in and passing. A feeling of frustration I hope we will not need to experience again.

So to the wilderness topic. I thought whales and dolphins would be the coolest animals on this trip. But so far the fly fish are the most notable. Yesterday night we were invaded by them and several of the crew were hit in the chest and even in the head. Maybe we should start wearing helmets.

I just went up on deck and stood in the aft waiting for navigator Aksel Magdahl to finish his ‘business', when I suddenly got tackled by a fish that died instantly and fell over Aksel's shoulder and almost ended up in his pants.

What will Mother Nature bring us next?

Gustav Morin - MCM.

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