What a day to start in, plenty of breeze, fast sailing with the spinnaker up, and we were neck and neck with Ericsson 4, not bad at all, we had great speed but -- all of a sudden a sickening crack. It turned out that a part of our steering broke, only 20 miles out from the start.

Only one rudder was working, so we made a beauty wipe-out. We had to take the spinnaker down and have been sailing slow for nearly 6 hours, when in the mean time Pepe (Ribez) and Xabier (Fernandez) were working on the repair.

At one stage we tried to put up a big spinnaker, but we were totally out of control so quickly changed back to a small jib. Of course an option was to stop, but since the breeze is going to die, this would mean a long and painful sail out of the med.

Still not sure if we are going to stop and take the 12 hour penalty, we know it will be expensive, as the boats ahead will always sail in more pressure and will stretch away from us.

We have to shore crew on standby, and have until Gibraltar to make my mind up. How do we feel? Just gutted. The good thing is that we crawled back on some of the other boats, but the Ericsson guys are in fat city.

Cheers, Bouwe (Bouwe Bekking - skipper)

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The Volvo Ocean Race 2008-09 will be the 10th running of this ocean marathon. Starting from Alicante in Spain, on 4 October 2008 with in-port racing, it will, for the first time, take in Cochin, India, Singapore and Qingdao, China before finishing in St Petersburg, Russia for the first time in the history of the race.

Spanning some 37,000 nautical miles, stopping at 11 ports and taking nine months to complete, the Volvo Ocean Race is the world's premier yacht race for professional racing crews.