We picked up the trades just after I filed the last Blog, and turned onto 268True for a direct route to Barbados. We now have to acclimatise to running goosewinged with the main and headsail on opposite sides of the boat, all poled out and roped down. Things were going well in about 15 knots of true wind with the Hydrovane steering, but in the middle of a very dark night the wind gusted up to 27 knots and the boat turned to port and backed the main. This required the skipper on the helm to get us back on track and then some reefing of both sails. We can reef our mainsail while running down wind as it furls into the mast, one of the only advantages of the system over a conventional system where you would have to come head to wind, not a great option with 27 knots behnd you. We waited until daylight to reset the Hydrovane (self steering) and resorted to the autopilot until then. We are now still reefed but not as much and are making 5.5 knots, a comfortable speed down wind for us. The skies are still grey and overcast, we have had no rain but it looks imminent all the time, we await the sun, it always seems cheerier in the sunshine. We have rested today after a somewhat sleep deprived night and are busy doing sums to estimate when we will arrive....current model says 14th. We are in email contact with one other rally boat and our friends on the ARC, the SSB net today yielded nothing although most of the channels were busy, again I picked up the W.Australian weather forecast on the 6 band! Apart from that we are OK, we have seen no other boats since we turned although there was a little chatter on the VHF so they must have been within 20 miles. Rally control sent us everyones position and it appears apart from the boats that stopped in Cape Verdes we are battling for last, still we just want to get there in one piece. No more wild life sightings although when we were reefing sails last night we found an expired flying fish in the cockpit. It obviously arrived when we were below, but it would have been a shock to have had it smack us in the face.