It is foggy both outside and inside. One thing is worse than another. This morning our navigator Aksel Magdahl had to keep his eyes on the radar all the time so we wouldn’t collide with any ships. Visibility was just couple of hundred metres and ships were suddenly appearing a bit too close.

It is pretty crowded with fishing boats here outside Shanghai and since we were doing 20 to 25 knots of boatspeed it was quite exciting there for a while.

The temperature has dropped 20 degrees in 24 hours. We now have around 10 degrees and the wind has shifted from southerly to almost northerly. We are now sailing upwind again. Slamming and bumping. But so far we haven’t seen more than 30 knots and the sea state is not as dramatic as last time.

What is going to be worse than last time is the cold. It will only get worse from now on. At first I thought it would be pretty nice with some cold air. It would feel like home for a while. And when I spent a couple of hours on deck today I actually kept that opinion.

But now, sitting still down below, the cold is not so nice anymore. You can see the air come out from your mouth and it’s so high in humidity that it seems it doesn’t matter how much clothes you put on. The moisture can still sneak in underneath your layers and make you freeze.

Unfortunately the forecast says that the wind will die out when we get closer to Qingdao. Right now it looks like we won’t make the start in time. We will probably meet the other boats on their way out and we will start a couple of hours behind.

But we are still pretty happy and keeping the hope up. Forecasts have been wrong before.

Gustav Morin - MCM.

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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.