BT Global Challenge - Leg 2 - 9th November

'Some watches are busier than others - and last night between 0400-0800 was one of them. I came on deck and it was raining, the first ominous sign. Conrad (skipper) called Dickon and I over to brief us on what was going on. We had the 2.2 oz spinnaker and a full main up, and both the staysail and the headsail hanked on ready to go. The wind was blowing 18 knots, which was fine for now - but the forecast was to go round to the north and pick up to 35 knots.

The other watch went down below and the breeze picked up. We hoisted the staysail and as the wind hit 25 knots the call went up to drop the kite - still pouring with rain of course. I climbed up to the end of the spinnaker pole on the downhaul, ready to spike the spinnaker free. Unfortunately, when I got up there I couldn't clip my carabiner on the pole as it was caught up in my life jacket and harness. This left me hanging on with one arm, while the boat rolls from one side to the other!

Conrad calls 'spike' and I fumble to find it, desperate not to mess things up. I grab the spike and release the snap shackle with a sigh of relief! As I got ready to descend back to the deck I lost my grip on the wet downhaul and plummeted SAS style to the deck, using my feet - as much as I could - as a brake. It was actually kind of fun and relatively controlled, as I landed 'neatly' on the deck! But I managed to give the guys at the back of the boat a fright as all they saw was a yellow clad (my waterproof top) bullet plummet towards the boat! I was fine though - all in a day's work. Later we had another spinnaker drop which went perfectly, with no SAS-abseil style landings.

We are still in the lead, in fact we made a few miles at the last position report which is good news. The weather at present is mixed and many of the other boats have had torrential rain. It is very overcast up on deck, but it is 0900 and time for me to get some sleep, let starboard watch sort things out for six hours.'

LG FLATRON are still ahead, and are in a position to gain more, as a low pressure to the south of the fleet, drifts off the coast of South America and into their path - the bringer of the rain that Andy talks about. The westerly breeze on the northern edge of the low pressure (the winds rotate clockwise around lows in the southern hemisphere) will fight the east or south-easterly trade winds, and leave a windless hole. Anyone who can squeeze through past the low pressure and get into the strong easterly breeze to the south of it - where the weather feature is reinforcing the trade winds - will make a big gain. The leaders have the best chance of slipping through this 'gate' before it shuts, and at 0801 GMT on Thursday 9th November, LG FLATRON had quite a lead. The BT Global Challenge website reported the positions and distances to the finish of the top six as:

1 LG FLATRON 1450 nm
2 Spirit of Hong Kong 1540 nm
3 VERITAS 1562 nm
4 BP 1566 nm
5 Logica 1581 nm
6 Compaq 1589 nm