2,500 miles to go and we are hunting down each member of the pack.

We are currently in 5th position and making maximum effort to make further gains on our competitors ahead of us.

We have had some eventful days down here in the southern ocean. We had a fantastic day sailing with our heavy weight spinnaker two days ago, hitting top speeds and surfing down waves.

During the night disaster struck, the wind angled changed by 90 degrees and a sudden wind increase by 15 knots caused the helmsman to loose control of the boat. The spinnaker wrapped and tore in half.

All crew were called on deck to help retrieve the pieces of the kite and get them down below. Immediately repairs had to begin as this kite is a crucial part of our racing ability.

We set work on drying the spinnaker with tea towels and hair dryers. We drew out a plan of where the damage was and how we were going to start fixing it.

Two days later and the sail repair team are down below hand stitching and patching the spinnaker together. Our sewing machine, though hand operated seems to be managing the task well and we discovered that my physiotherapy tape is very useful for sticking sail cloth together.

Despite this we have managed to sail the boat fast and make significant gains on the fleet ahead. Last night we entered stealth mode hoping that we might be able to pop out a couple of places ahead within that time.

This afternoon my first time on deck since the tear in the spinnaker occured, we suddenly noticed another clipper boat approximately 2 miles away from us on our port side. " Its Edinburgh" someone shouted "and we are ahead of them!"

It was amazing to see another boat on the ocean after 2000 miles and even more amusing that they had spotted us during our stealth mode. We had a chat on the radio before they dipped away over the horizon to the south of us. We will probably not see them now until Geraldton.

So with approximately 10 days to go we are starting to make our way very slowly north again and hope to have our spinnaker repaired in the next couple of days.

Our next targets are Jamaica then possible Spirit of Australia. The race is most certainly on!