By Sharon Ferris-Choat

• 39° 57′. 911N
• 34° 08′.631W
• TWD 282° to 023°
• TWS 16.2 ok n to 36 knots
• COG 090°
• SOG 7 to 14.5 knots
• Sea temperature 22.2°
• Sea state 4.5 to 5.5m

We have had a huge night with building seas and wind! Down came all the big sails and we were left with the small ones sitting above 10 knots of boat speed heading direction Horta, in a moonless night with breaking waves all around us and we were loving it!

Everyone was well prepared for the night and everyone did their set task and more. At one point, we were hit by one of the side-buster waves and lost all our instruments, a group of display units telling us what course we are steering, the direction of the wind and also most important our speed – Ami has set a new leg record of 16.4 knots.

This situation was corrected in seconds with Sarah reading out Maiden’s compass so she could concentrate on the waves while Hadley reset the instruments.

This is all training for tonight as it’s going to be fresher and bigger waves. Always amazing when your weather team have words like gusts/squalls 40-50 knots and NW seas building at least 14 – 20 feet. So we are ready and have a good plan, we just had 20 knots and it felt like no wind compared to the last 24 hours.

Henriette just made us her Danish Spaghetti Bolognese recipe which we all loved for Lunch. It’s Lungi’s pre-made cottage pie for dinner that will fuel us through the next 24 hours and the good news is, on the other side of this is Horta, currently 258nm away.

Our ETA is UTC 0600 27th October.

So from a surfing, squall, rainbow, amazing waves, sun, rain, well prepared Maiden have a great night!