SAILING VOLVO OCEAN RACE: Week Seven DiaryIt's been an eventful week on the Green Dragon with both boat and bodies suffering a battering

OUR BOAT and bodies are battered and bruised but we've never felt more determined here on the Dragon.

We're heading through the Indian Ocean towards the infamous Doldrums and to still be battling it out with the leaders in a good position is just fantastic for us when you consider the week we've had.

It was a devastating blow to break our boom in a 50-knot squall last Tuesday. We just stared at each other in disbelief thinking that it was all over for us for this leg.

The boom is an integral part of the yacht which supports and controls the mainsail. We were all in shock for a few moments when it happened, but then we knuckled down and tried different methods of sheeting (controlling) the mainsail without the boom and we quickly realised we could overcome the problem without losing too much performance.

It's not easy sailing without a boom and we'll never be 100 per cent efficient, but I'd even go as far as to say that we've become quite good at it!

We were ecstatic to get to the scoring gate in third place two days later. It really boosted our confidence and lifted our spirits. We earned enough points to put us in joint-second place overall.

We decided our priority was to get to the gate but, now that we're heading north to India, we're weighing up whether to try to repair the boom.

We considered flying a spare one to Diego Garcia, a British island leased to the US military in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and making a pit stop to fit the new one, but that's now not possible. So we're going to have to soldier on and decide whether or not it's even worth trying to repair it ourselves. The feeling is that it might just be better to concentrate on going as fast as we can with what we've got.

It's not just the boat that has taken a battering. I've been in the wars myself this week and badly bruised my ribs in another vicious squall. So much water came over the deck that I was unable to hold onto the cockpit and was washed back onto my harness line and thrown against the traveller beam.

Life's been particularly unpleasant as just getting in and out of my gear has been painful, let alone trying to sail. I'm now able to get out of my bunk without it hurting too much and every day I'm feeling a bit better.

It's been quite a rough leg all round so far. A few days earlier we had a problem reefing our mainsail as we crossed the mighty Agulhas Current which runs down the east of Africa. I needed to climb the mast - that's 31 metres high - in some of the roughest conditions I'd ever experienced in all my ocean sailing. I was up there for 15 minutes or so, being thrown around like a rag doll. I came down with cuts and bruises to my head and my hands locked closed from gripping the rigging. I felt like I'd just spent an hour rucking with the Munster pack.

Later that afternoon we broke a piece of our steering gear which sent the Dragon careering into what was my first Chinese gybe - an out of control involuntary gybe where the boat flattens sideways into the water. Luckily Anthony Merrington (Youngster) managed to grab the second wheel and regain control, getting us back on our feet again. It was a bit like rolling your car and then rolling it back upright and continuing on again. You rarely come out of a Chinese gybe unscathed.

Hopefully our woes are behind us now as we race on towards the Doldrums. We've had Telefonica Blue and Puma within sight over the last couple of days and the whole fleet was within a 60-mile radius of each other at one stage at the weekend.

As we head north it's getting a lot warmer on board as we leave the freezing temperatures of the Southern Ocean behind. It's quite nice to be back in our shorts again.

Since we passed the scoring gate we've been lucky to maintain really good wind pressure not typical of this area and we've made good headway. This stretch of water is an unknown quantity to us all, as no professional race has ever sailed this way round the world. Right now it's just a few hundred miles to the Doldrums and a further thousand to the finish.

We've just broken through a ridge of high pressure and are now sailing in the north east trades which will bring us right up to the Doldrums and potentially a whole new set of problems. We could see the fleet parking up in little wind, effectively forcing a restart and possibly another as we approach Cochin. While we can be competitive downwind (with the wind behind us), our main problem is that without a boom we will struggle upwind (into the wind).

Luckily the weather has brought us quite far east and well out of the range of the Somali pirates. We've got enough to contend with out here without dealing with pirates as well. But, with the week we've had, I think the Dragon is just about ready to take on anything!