Right here, right now

Paul 'Fatboy Slim' Larsen paints another memorable picture of life on board Doha 2006

It's a gorgeous, tropical night on deck. Completely the opposite of the conditions from the last update. The thing with writing daily reports is that you have to send them immediately because in the space of a few hours, let alone a whole day, things can change dramatically. This must leave people following the race wondering what we make all the fuss about some times.

Yesterday within the space of an hour or so we went from cold, wet and full Musto HPX one-piece suits (I was even wearing a full face crash-helmut whilst driving to avoid the spray) to shorts and nothing. As I came on deck in the morning to grind out the reefs from the previous nights horrible upwind bashing session I was greeted with four people on the grinding pedastals. Two were in the aforementioned full suits and two were bare chested in shorts. It was obvious someone was wrong. The shorts won.

So the seas mercifully flattened out as we sailed through the Indian Ocean's weird version of the Doldrums and all didn't seem that bad. Moods quite often change in direct proportion to the clothing. We have managed to keep the boat moving all the time and for the last 16 hours have been in a southwesterly flow that has finally allowed us to point the bows at the Straits of Hormuz and the home paddock. Boat speed has been up and everything is rosy. There is still a lot of upwind work to come but it looks set to be in lighter winds than experienced and therefore more gentle seas.

The sunset tonight was one of , if not the best, of the trip. The sky had everything going on everywhere. Big dramatic cumulus, lots of high level stratus, black squalls and clear patches in between. It was very dramatic and reminded me of the ones you see painted in those huge depictions of famous battles at sea hanging in galleries. I ran around all over the place with an array of camera gear but it was just to big and beautiful to capture.

As our time in the south shrinks to single figures latitude wise the temperature below decks goes up. All the sealed hatches have been un-sealed in an effort to let a breeze blow through. People are forever looking for new and creative places around the boat to sleep. The hanked on sails up forward were popular but gets a bit bouncy if people begin running around on the trampoline up there. Always the chance of getting hoisted too, simply for the amusement of the on-watch team of pranksters. The minute you are hit by a single ray of tropical sun it's all over also.

Damian [Foxall - diddy little Irish fella] is vertically challenged enough so as he can sleep in the 'toboggan' storage locker at the base of the mast which seems to work well. The bunks are just sweat boxes but are still occupied by the dedicated few. Andy [Meiklejohn] was sent aloft for yet another rig check and found some minor damage around one of the many 'Jesus' pins critical to holding the mast up. This one was for the forestay. After a second trip up with the rigger's version of a first aid kit he returned happy that all was good for the remainder of the trip.

It feels great to be sailing straight towards the mark as we have spent the last few weeks seemingly pointing anywhere but there in an effort to deal with the weather. In my mind I am constantly doing the math of how many miles are actually counting towards the finish (VMG) but today nearly all of them did. We are all quietly doing a lot of sums in our heads counting down the miles and conversations are now moving onto subjects about what is coming up next after all this is over.

The team will scatter to the corners of the earth we just sailed around but one thing is for sure, sailing figures big in everyone's plans. Even after 60 odd days of non-stop sailing we can't wait to get back home... so we can all go sailing again. Sometimes we don't even stop to think how obsessed we are with the ways of wind and water. The conversations drift from one form of craft to the other (SPLATCH! another flying fish just bought the farm hard outside my media centre... maybe I should shut the hatch. That's
gotta hurt.), from maxi-cats, to 60ft tri', to speed sailing craft and Hobie cats, Olympic keel boats and Open 7.5s... they're all there. And they are all waiting for us one plane trip out of Doha. Cool.

Hmm, let's see, currently doing 12 knots at the mark, 9°S plus 20° odd north adds up to 29 times 60 miles for each degree. Say 1800 plus the westing we have to make that's..... and so it goes. Thank the Lord we have sunsets to like tonight's which just stop us in our tracks and make us love the 'right here and now'.

Paul.