Everybody had a pretty tough day, since two sometimes three of our guys were repairing the spinnaker, as it was in thousand pieces. This mend we had to do standby watches to cover the sail makers. Of course they were not happy, Jordi's face showed it clearly, but they ripped immediately back into it.

So yesterday I was on deck from 0600 to 1900, than down for one hour and then again up for my normal watch. But a similar story for all others. The last watch we drunk plenty of coffee, to help keep the eyes open. Luckily the breeze has picked up, so not suffering too much with the small spinnaker.

The waves are very short and not pleasant, lots of water over the deck, way more water than on the movistar [in the last race], but we are in control. One thing I have to mention is, it is good to see how well Delta Lloyd is going, not only they have been sailing very smart, but they are not slow either. That will open doors for the next race, and hopefully more teams will use older generation boats, and still be competitive.

Bouwe Bekking - skipper.

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.