Sailing: Damian Foxallis co-skipper with Jean-Pierre Dick on Paprec-Virbac in the non-stop Barcelona World Race. As the fleet heads down the South Atlantic they continue to dispute the lead.
This is it; countdown mode once again but after three weeks into this 25,000-mile contest. By next weekend we will have reached the Southern Ocean, probably the least hospitable region of the planet and certainly the loneliest.
Within days we will have left the Tranquil Twenties and engaged with the Roaring Forties for our circumnavigation of Antarctica.
Our dash down the South Atlantic since crossing the Equator has seen a lot happen within the fleet of nine Open 60-footers. Thankfully, we the Paprec-Virbac crew have maintained our position at the head of the fleet in a tit-for-tat duel with PRB that has seen us give and take the overall lead.
We got our Equator tactics a bit wrong, gybing too early when in the lead. Our constant rivals Vincent Riou and Seb Josse on PRB left it later than us, went farther west and as a result had a great crossing of the Doldrums, building a 30-mile lead.
Since then, we hauled them back in and got into the lead again before the weekend after we passed the scoring gate of Fernando de Noronha, off the coast of Brazil.
Now, as we both chart our paths around the St Helena High, we're looking good to get another slingshot ahead of the others thanks to this pretty reliable weather system.
Right now, we trail PRB by 36 miles on the official race tracker, though with 19,500 miles to go, we're effectively neck and neck.
Roland Jourdain and Jean-Luc Nélias on Veolia Environment are more than 250 miles astern and sailing slower, as are the others.
We think this margin will quickly grow over the next few days and ourselves and PRB could have a 500-mile lead entering the Southern Ocean toward the next scoring gate, south of the Cape of Good Hope.
This will be essential, because Alex Thompson and Andrew Cape on Hugo Boss produced some impressive boat-speed when they sailed around Delta Dore in breeze. These guys could be a real threat in the heavy swells of the Southern Ocean.
We've done well so far, with the boat in good shape apart from a broken bilge pump and some hydraulic gear that needs attention.
JP and I have been able to get up to 12 hours' rest per day. Our diet has been more varied than in other races I've done.
Some Spanish ham, bread and biscuits are welcome changes from the usual freeze-dried fare - and the added ballast entailed actually helps us.
It's been an eventful week for sure and more to come; we expect to be in the Southern Ocean for the next six weeks.
For now I'll sign off with a memory of Steve Fossett with whom I was fortunate enough to crew with when we broke the round-the-world record on Cheyenne.
He's been missing for more than three months and the process of declaring him officially dead is underway.
It would be wishful thinking to hope he took off somewhere for a quiet break from the limelight of all his epic adventures. Maybe. But wherever his resting place is, be it the Colorado desert or a bar in South America, I wish him rest and peace.
In conversation with David Branigan (branigan@indigo.ie)
