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Slightly further back are the 4 crews of Explore, Pendovey Swift, Ocean Summit and Nyamezela. They have just 10nm between them and at this stage of a race, nearly 10 weeks after starting it is incredible to think that several crews could all cross the finish line within hours of each other - although many will just want the race to be over at the first opportunity and may not be too concerned about their final race position.

Several crews are still commenting on how hot their environment remains to be with Peter Van Kets saying he had to stop his session a few minutes early to "avoid be cooked alive." Elsewhere James Ketchell said he has to move quickly around deck to avoid burning his feet.

Roger Haines spent part of his day engineering a rig for his camera to film the view from a rowers perspective. This seems to entail strapping a video camera to his head which by his own confession didn't work so well, but can be seen on his most recent blog.

The forecast for the next few days suggests that as crews get closer to Antigua, they will have to cope with winds from of southerly direction. This will inevitably make navigation harder as crews battle to stay on the correct course to make land, and as the crew of HCL Workforce 1 point out, "as the finish line looms closer, navigation gets a bit tighter." That is to say that when in the middle of the ocean crews can be relatively flexible with their latitude, but now they are at the business end of the race they must be far more accurate and disciplined with their heading.