It feels good to once again be heading west rather than away from the Lorient finish.

As predicted, Groupama and Telefónica are giving a master class in reaching speed as the fleet slowly curves up in the lifting breeze towards the Azores.

There can be no denying we made a right pig’s ear of the start.

After a tense night in light winds we seem to be poking our way through the high pressure ridge into better wind but I am not taking anything for granted yet.

There haven’t been that many occasions in this race when we have been able to look forward to the three hourly position reports but the last 12 hours has been an exception.

Another fantastic night sail last night as we cleared the Doldrums and set off blasting across the trades with the spinnaker up.

24 hours ago we sailed up to Camper as it went dark and managed to roll over the top of them as the wind went very light and fickle.

At the start of this race one of the things I was looking forward to most was some close racing in similarly matched boats.

It’s amazing how much can be achieved in 24 hours. This is how long we have had Azzam in our hands since she was offloaded from the ship yesterday morning.

It was with some relief that we spotted land today.