Greetings all from the Green Dragon.

After week 1, the racing is still as close and as interesting as it was on day 1, which intense but the sailing has been great. I should start at the beginning, thank you so much everyone involved the start. It was a great event and a real privilege to be a part of.

I emailed my fiancée Charlotte a few days ago, saying that it didn’t feel like the start of the Volvo Ocean Race until about 1 hour before we left, when this amazing feeling came over the village and we all started saying our goodbyes. It’s hard enough saying goodbye to Charlotte and her family; I can’t begin to imagine how it feels for our guys with young kids.

The start was full of drama for us with gear failure, something that has never happened to us before. We just got another position report and we are slowly getting a bit back on the leaders which is nice to hear after a few days of not really knowing how we are positioned....

As for life onboard, the days are really flying by, which is good and the sailing really is magic. Everyone onboard is in really good spirits and gets on very well; I think it shows the quality of the crew as a group. Our only real worry has to be Neal MacDonald. He hurt his knee a few days ago which has been a concern, but he is being treated by medic Tom (Braidwood), following some great advice by doctor Tommo (Mark Thompson).

It's really great to have people like that literally at our finger tips. Neal also had a shocker the other day, wearing his wedding ring. It got stuck and cut his finger, not very badly, but enough to look slightly infected, swell up and force us to cut his ring off (sorry Lisa if you are reading this before he writes to you....). Apart from that, we have had the occasional attack from flying fish, hitting me a few times and whoever dares to stick their head above the stack!!

The water is warmer and the temperature is getting hotter every day. Downstairs is a bit of a sweat box, which is good for the few of us athletically overweight!!!

Well guys, not much more to report, might go and have another one of our beautifully prepared meals and fill it full of flavour with everybody's favourite, TABASCO!!!

Hope this finds you all well, and I'll write to you again from the southern hemisphere!

Cheers
Phil Harmer - helmsman / trimmer.

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.