Race 1 - Day 3 Crew Diary - London, UK to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 03 September Kat Law.

It was glorious weather again, but for the first several hours of my day watch there was absolutely no wind. A large portion of the fleet was bobbing around, stuck flapping in the tide. As a watch we decided that we wanted to make the most out of what little wind we had which meant changing from windseeker, to spinnaker, to yankee several times.

However, when we hoisted the lightweight spinnaker I noticed a small tear at the bottom centre. This meant that after all of our efforts hoisting the spinnaker we now had to bring it down for repair, and hoist the medium weight in its place. After repairing the small tear with a patch, we wooled the sail away during 'happy hour' where we learnt that our place in the fleet had greatly improved - excellent news! - with this knowledge both watches were eager to chase down our next rival, Visit Seattle.

During my off watch the wind picked up significantly, and I came on deck to a beautiful sunset with dolphins crashing through the waves alongside us. The idllic scence did not last long for me as I headed below to wool another spinnaker, and to replace some of the spectre doughnuts. However, below I coud feel the boat's speed increasing and so despite being below deck for the whole of my watch I still felt part of the action!

I have woken to excellent news as I write this, and that is we are now looking back on Visit Seattle. Time to take the next one!