Day 16 to 37:32N 43:00W Wind F4-5SSW 182nm

Whenever I mention to another crew member or think to myself I'd like more wind I'm always careful how I phrase it - A little more wind or a few more knots. At the moment with 20knots or so it's about right or a little on the high side of right even with one reef in the main. In the 6 hours between my 3am watch and 9am we ran 51 miles through the water and 48 over land. 8.5knots is a good speed for us to run consistently and this is not flat water. Last night we could see a true Ocean swell beginning to form and now it is about 10ft peak to trough with about 40ft between peaks - about right for the current wind. So it's a wild ride with a loud thwack and spray flying 20ft into the air every so often as a wave breaks or we slap down between two waves. Things we had casually perched on shelves have begun to fall off(and be put away properly) and screws (or at least one screw) have started to come undone and need to be tightened. It is also harder to sleep particularly for Justin and Jim in the forward cabin. I had to wake Justin for his watch for the first time ever. At the moment the swell is on our starboard bow. If it gets too bumpy then we will turn downwind enough to bring it onto the starboard quarter where we ride waves particularly well and they will also be slower relative to boat speed. We can change course later when things calm a little as they are supposed to by Saturday. When you are at the helm station and also at the peak of a wave your eyeheight is about 20 feet above the wave troughs, quite vertiginous with the wind whistling past your ears and the constant waterfall noise of our wake. Louise described the noise in her cabin as like being in a war zone.

We have had a couple of broken transmissions in French on the radio, perhaps our friends of yesterday now left far behind, but not enough to understand. They are in a 36ft steel boat and had been at a similar speed to us until the winds picked up. Haku may not be a light airs boat but she is terrific in these conditions.

Last night was movie night (although I forgot to break out the popcorn) and we watched Defiance with Daniel Craig which was pretty good. I always find it surreal to be sitting in the "living room" watching a movie and then to look outside at the big swell, it's amazing how a movie takes you away from it all. I am a closet Chick Flick watcher and I have one called The Holiday with Cameron Diaz and Jack Black on my iPod that I have watched in the past when everything got too much and I had been battered around the boat for too long. It's a charming film set in LA and England at Christmas and completely removes me from my surroundings for two hours.

Over the last two days everyone has been eating well (seasickness gone despite the bumps) and today is a comfort food day, also a cook very carefully day as the contents of a pan held in one hand could easily end upon the ceiling or over the cook. I can see Italian sausages defrosting and I suspect Jim plans spaghetti with tomato and Sausage sauce for dinner.

Now 3pm and I have filled in our excellent noon run above. We had grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken soup for lunch. Our distance to waypoint (Horta) hit 666 and naturally something went wrong. Our starboard "black water" holding tank has obviously bunged up and when someone uses the heads we get an unpleasant smell and worse coming out of the overflow pipe. We've done everything we can think of to unblock this and are hoping that the chemicals we've put in will work in about 12 hours and in the mean time everyone gets to use mine (joy) which is in the other hull and not linked. I suppose this is fates way of compensating for the otherwise exhilarating sailing.

We've turned 10 degrees to Port to avoid hitting the swell and are hitting 10kts boat speed occasionally which makes the wholeboat gently vibrate, I assume as the hulls plane.

We had a turtle drift by us earlier and we just had a group of dolphins doing whole body leaps out of the water between the waves. They look like they are having enormous fun. Louise has at least one picture.

Yesterday we passed two half way marks, the one for this leg and the one for the whole journey. I offered to open a bottle of wine as a celebration but discovered I had no takers, even me. All high enough on the fast sailing.