Early Wednesday morning 26th January. We are trundling along with light northerlies at around 4 knots awaiting the next onslaught of high winds. The forecast is not good with high winds of 25 over the next 36 hours so we are battened down with little sail ready for it to happen. Yesterday Tuesday was a day of contrast from the previous day and night which had been extremely uncomfortable. On my early night watch we were screaming along at over 8.5 knots with very little sail up. There was nothing I could do to slow the boat down and was quite terrified that something would break so in the end Brian had to get up from his much needed sleep and we struggled in 20-25 knots and huge seas to take down what was left of the well reefed main. During the hours of darkness this is not a task we like doing so tonight we prepared ourselves expecting the winds to increase around 1am, our time, so far they have not happened and are still blowing from the north at around 10knots. A couple of hours ago we saw lightning but thankfully that has now passed.

Weather in the area of Sri Lanka and the Gulf between the tip of India is often bad and our weather is a result of what is happening there. Should the going get too tough we will hove to and wait for the weather to improve.

Hope to have better news next time.