Light airs, fog and Catherine's 30th birthday

A very happy 30th birthday to Catherine Plane

Catherine Plane, seen here helming, is 30 today. Fellow crew member, Claire Maloney, reports on life on board and birthday celebrations :

"We’ll never hesitate to let you know just how tough it is out here. How cold, wet and windy it’s been; the basic living conditions; the struggle to perform those daily tasks. As a fully committed racing machine, we’re constantly battling against the elements, fighting against adversity, striving always to eek out those extra knots of boat speed.

But it’s not our fault if it happens to be rather nice out here sometimes. If we happen to be serenaded by sea-lions at the race start, or if we have a pod of six killer whales swim in formation up to the boat. You probably don’t want to hear any more stories of dolphins bow riding in their dozens, or blowing phosphorescence in the dark.

We didn’t choose the weather, and the gentle downwind sailing we’ve been granted just happens to mean that the boat is flat and dry at the moment. Moving around the yacht is easy, cleaning is not a chore and being in the galley is (almost) a pleasant experience.

Catherine’s birthday cake managed to come out of the oven an even thickness – no bias to the downwind side this time.

Not a bad day to have your 30th birthday. It’s warm and sunny these days, and we’ve been steadily removing layers since leaving Santa Cruz. But it hasn’t reached the blistering hot stage yet. Just perfect. We’ve got fog today, though, for the first time in the race really. Visibility is 100-200 metres, and we’ve been ‘maintaining a proper lookout at all times’. It’s not exactly busy out here, but as Simon says, “it would only take one ship.”

We’re actually enjoying the spinnaker sailing at the moment. Over the last few thousand miles we’ve definitely got better at the old kite trimming. Moving the pole up, down, forwards and back isn’t quite such a trauma as it was on leg one. And, frankly, you’d hope not!

So it’s not all struggle and strife. But we’ll soon let you know when it gets tough again, don’t worry."

Skipper, Simon Bradley added :

“As it became dark this evening it was quite eerie as the fog seemed to close in from all sides. The crew are keeping ultra alert on deck maintaining lookout by sight and sound, while down below decks a radar watch is in place - so far we’ve been on our own.”

In terms of race position, JAMAICA is currently 8th and 60 miles off the lead. In these light conditions they have decided to gybe further in shore, as the race viewer below shows, as the forecasted stronger off shore winds have not materialised. Only Liverpool remains on its lonely voyage to the West.