The tag line "Life at the Extreme" is not exactly telling the truth tonight. It is one of those nights that you wonder will ever happen again when crashing head on through waves when the entire boat and every article of clothing you own is soaking wet. But tonight is none of that. Full moon. Every ounce of sail we can get up is up.

For a while we were ripping along in the mid teens with just a slight ocean swell and not a drop on deck. T-shirts and shorts. A slight lift and we are back on the chute and still cruising along with 13 knots of wind. Which is a gale compared with most of today when we saw pretty much a glass off for a better part of the afternoon and our two closest friends-E3 and Telefónica Black both snuck by. Oh well, we have gotten E 3 back and press on.

Major issues below today as Salty (Rob Salthouse) lost one boot. Seriously distressed (as he has no other shoes on board) he started to rip the boat apart and decided to wait it out until the boat was emptied by a little wind and getting all the stuff below back on deck. Of course we all wound him up with stories that the boot may have been packed in the spinnaker and gone up and over on the last hoist. The breeze finally filled and the gear went up and somehow the boot was found by the distressed owner as if he had placed a photo on a milk carton.

Everyone had a nice chance to catch up on their sleep today as the tack - gybe-sail change-stack fest that got us out of the Med is over. Benign ocean sailing right now.

All good.
Kenny (Ken Read - 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.