When Jono (Jonathan Swain) quipped 'a man is not a fish' it summed up the last 24 hours pretty nicely. Bloody wet! We have had good breeze for the last 24 hours and coupled with a sea state that would be more fitting for a washing machine it has made life pretty tough on board. There is a constant stream of water flowing over the deck as we speed down one wave into another.

We have been pushing hard to get back up the fleet but it is proving tough. It seems there are no slouches in this race and every mile has to be fought for hard.

Without the A2 spinnaker yesterday we have had to be focused on just keeping up and not letting the guys slip away. Again have had to we say to ourselves be patient and our opportunities will come but it is getting frustrating put in so much effort with little visible reward.

To add insult to injury after Jordi (Calafat) and Daryl (Wislang) worked tirelessly through the day yesterday to fix the broken sail to allow us to re-hoist it, this morning it blew up again one more time. So it was back to the sewing machine for those guys and onto a smaller sail for us whilst they work hard again to put the thing back into one piece.

As I am writing now they are nearing completion (for the second time) - a mammoth task given that the boat is bucking and rolling wildly from side to side as we are ploughing through the waves.

Still, with all the problems, we had we can still sit back and say, we are still in this race. Everyone remains focused and looks forward to better times that will surely come as we head south toward the Equator.

Cheers,

Si Fi (Simon Fisher - navigator).

Visit www.volvooceanrace.org for all the latest news!

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.