© Vincent Curutchet / Hublot Sailing Team

Hello Azores! Just a few more miles and I might be able to see an island from the cockpit window. Hello Azores! Just a few more miles and I might be able to see an island from the cockpit window.

These islands have been a long time coming...

It's another night when you wonder what you're doing here! As much as I like heavy weather, I like the sea as well if possible! It's like a black runway: it's great if it's beautiful (I never take one, but that's just an example). Well, right now it's a steady 30 knots with cross seas, and it's continuing to stall, right up to the back of the boat. It accelerates to 30 knots and stops at 8. And it goes on and on! I've probably got a bow full of water again, so that can't be helping.... I really feel like I'm in a submarine. I tell myself I'm a poor little boat, but in fact I'm the victim here! I'm not sleeping, I'm hardly eating and I'm spending my nights clinging to my seat waiting for it to pass.

The very good news, however, is that we should be arriving on the 11th in the late afternoon, with downwind conditions right to the end. It's funny, when you look at the sail to use on the routing, it's always the one you've blown! I'm going to find a way to make up for that, and I'm not the only one with a slightly handicapped boat anyway.

We're going to gybe in around 100 miles, just outside the Azores, to get back on the northern route and aim for the layline (direct route) to pass to the north of the DST in La Coruña.