At 01:30 (04:30 UTC) this morning we crossed that invisible line and sailed into the Northern Hemisphere. The only celebration that took place at the time was a whole lot of snoring from those who were off-watch. Terry, who was on watch, made himself a cup of tea!

So, when everybody was awake this morning, we had a bacon, sausage and egg breakfast with a glass of bubbly and orange juice - and gave old Neptune a sip as well. I also presented each crew member with a certificate commemorating the event as it is most unlikely that they will ever cross the equator aboard a vessel again.

So, at noon today we had a noon to noon run of 182 nautical miles - a little better than I expected considering we have had little wind over the last 12 hours. We now have 1673 nautical miles to go to Tortola.

Richard, on the 46' behind us, has had some problems. They were pushing their boat a bit hard to try and catch up to us and ripped their spinnaker at the clew. Being innovative and having an innovative crew on board, they have managed to repair the spinnaker (although nobody knows how long the repair will last) with Sikaflex, a very tough silicone sealant. They have dropped back from being just over 400 nm behind us to now just over 500 nm behind us. For David Heaslip, your son is fine and appears to be enjoying himself.

At the moment we have the spinnaker up and, at times, are doing over 9 knots with the help of the current that is giving us a 2 knot boost. However, all good things must come to an end and in a few days we will be loosing the current and have to go back to 'normal sailing'.

The bird life around us has been quite spectacular. Whilst on watch earlier, we had a large flock of birds near the boat in a feeding frenzy. There were obviously some large fish chasing some small fish, which the birds were also having for dinner. Talking of dinner and fish, guess what is on the menu for our dinner. Ah, you guessed correctly - we are having tuna fishcakes 'down under', which basically means that Terry is cooking us fishcakes.

On that fishy note I bid you well until the next blog report. Regards from Terry (the fishcake king), Shaheda, Shaun and myself, John (alias Neptune Rex).