The rich get richer.

Classic North Atlantic conditions see the leaders enjoying close racing while the tailenders drop further behind.

Gurra Krantz reports on despair and desperation aboard Team SEB

Our situation with the broken headboard car has rocked our boat and we have for a while lost the initiative of choosing our own track. One thing that goes wrong, read for example mainsail down for over five hours, leads to a different position than the one you wanted, which forces you to alter the plan a little. The alteration is very often spiced with some doubts and rarely crowned with success. Once in the trailing mode it is easy to start looking for new alternatives to recover and they do not come cheep. At the moment it is very expensive, as the rich are getting richer.

Our easterly tracking has this far been wrong and painful. In hindsight we should have taken more loss at the front passage on port tack to get through the front. What we did now was to tack to starboard at the windshift and then without the main up, we were not able to sail high enough to get through the front properly. The wave situation gave us no choice other than a more open angle, more easterly, to keep some speed in the difficult sea. To tack back and head almost north was not to tempting at the time. As we sailed very slow at the time, we banked too much on the front being fast enough to run over us and do the rest of the job, 39 knots in the gusts and very rough sea, broken headboard car, tacking sails everywhere, rain and dark did not help.

Tom Braidwood had the honour of being up the mast that night and looking at his body now he could have been in a bar fight with only body punches. Young Scott Beavis had the same honour of being in the same bar, but he took the punches on the nose. Bouncing around in the rig can be dangerous with all the waves making the boat pitch violently. We are lucky it all went well.

That is how we look at it now. It is going to take a lot to get back and we are focused on doing it. The whole crew has done a fantastic job all the time. Everybody lost a bit of sleep that night and it got the watches out of rhythm. Now we have that under control and we have to get on with the job, get us back in the race.