Banana week is going well but it's also now yogurt week and cake week, we've so much food that needs eating! Phillip cooked us fillet steak for dinner last night with hand made chips, yum! Mike: When it came to provisioning for this trip we made sure we got a few treats. So naturally I got 10kgs of potatoes and the Murray-Walkers got 100kgs of sweet things like chocolate and cakes.

We're certainly starting to catch more fish, we think because the water is getting warmer (now 27 degrees). Yesterday we caught 5 before breakfast but all being smallish dorado we set them free again (see photo of one the the lucky ones). We did get a bite from a very big one this morning but he snapped the hook before we could get him aboard, bummer.

Heading further south has done us well, Winds have been 15-25 knots for the last 24 hours and it looks set to continue today. We had some watches yesterday average in the 7's and 8's yesterday which is great, our daily runs are improving. While we have the boat going great unfortunately the seas are awful, it's still a sharp and confused swell in which the boat really pitches around making sleep very difficult. Meal times are especially funny as we sit around the cockpit table and it's quite civilised except we have to eat one handed because you need the other to hold your plate. Mike and I have decided some bigger bowls and splades are a necessity going forward.

On a more problematic note, one of our battery chargers has blown. We'd actually ended up replacing our entire service battery bank in Las Palmas and while that is great now we can't charge them efficiently which means we're running the generator or the engine in neutral upto 8 hours a day, it's driving us all a little mad :( At first it was just a blown fuse in the charger but not having the correct replacement I hot wired it and on reconnection there was a big bang and some smoke, I think it's very dead now.

We are now though officially on course for Saint Lucia (following a great circle route), we also expect to pass halfway around lunchtime today.

PS: Last night Phillip got the fright of his life when on watch by himself in pitch black night a flying fish flew into the cockpit and hit him on the leg!

Mike: My friend, Lane, put me onto a great set of books (4 in all) called the 'Game of Thrones'. They made a TV series out of the first book last year and the second book is in production now. I'm really enjoying them and would recommend them if you have the time. We finished the Walking Dead and Entourage episodes that we had so we must choose a new one (hopefully not Glee!). When we reach half way today we will be the furthest possible distance away from land on this trip at 1350nm's or 2500km's.