received 17.12.08 2317 GMT
The strategy for today has been pretty straightforward; make progress to the north side of the course where there will be more wind for the second half of the beat across the Bay of Bengal. And do so by staying on the lifted tack. We've seen the wind direction swing from 70 to 105 degrees, so there have been plenty of opportunities to chip away at the fleet. We've tacked at least 15 times today. We've had to negotiate through several rainsqualls, just to add a bit of flavour, with some 'game time' calls on which way to work around these clouds.
By my calculations, we just passed the Russians who are sailing on the same tack as us directly in the north, although the Position Reports still place us a couple miles behind them.
With a very slim lead on the Russians, we still have a long grind to catch the lead group. They seem to be quite quick on this leg and we'll have our work cut out for us. In the meantime, it's going to be a long slug- fest of upwind sailing for the next couple of days. Joy (sic).
Matthew Gregory - navigator
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