Day 14 to 36:27N 49:06W Wind F3-4SSW-SW 134nm (23 hours as time zone changed)

Although not as good a run as the last few days still good given the wind, it actually works out to 140nm logged in 24 hrs although only 123nm run because of a counter current.

I've had many occasions in the past to curse Microsoft but this one was slightly different. At lunchtime today we had a call from some nice French people in a sail boat not far from ours asking if we had weather information. Apparently everything has broken on their boat and they can't get the wind speed let alone the weather. I was about to go online to get our weather information so Jim replied in French that we would call them back in a few minutes and share it with them. At that point my pc had a hard crash with the message "hardware failure contact vendor". It showed glimmers of life if left to cool for a while but clearly something was very wrong and it wouldn't work for more than a few minutes at a time. I spent some hours trying to bring my backup pc online but something in the operating system wouldn't let me create a dial up connection using the satellite modem that is clearly installed and running. Eventually I called Kim on the sat phone and she read me the weather which we were then able to pass onto the French. We expect them to buy us a beer in Horta. I don't give up on things easily (the word obsessive has been mentioned - quite often in fact) so eventually I went back to my original pc and really stripped it down with the intent of getting rid of any dust accumulation that might be causing it to overheat. This laptop has run pretty hot since it was new and I've never understood how the cooling works as it only has one vent where the air comes out and nowhere obvious for it get in. Anyway, in the course of trying to remove the base it became obvious that there was a hidden screw somewhere still holding it and it looked likely to be under the Microsoft Windows label. As we removed the label we found not only the screw but also the air intake for cooling the PC which had been covered as long as I've had it. 5 minutes of me blowing through a drinking straw making a noise like a flatulent duck (in lieu of a compressed air can) had at least some dust out of the system and it has now worked again since I reassembled it and for the first time with nice cool air coming out of the exit vent. So there you go, if Microsoft can't get you with the operating system or the software they'll do it with the label.

However, on day 13 of our voyage this wasn't enough for fate to throw at us. While reconnecting everything to the computer the plug fell off of the satellite antenna rendering it unusable. The sat phone does also have a little pull up aerial which works for voice but as you have to have 5 bars reception to get it to send or receive data this is not always a viable option for email. Justin and I have worked until full darkness with a soldering iron, a blowtorch and a cribbage board trying to repair this and have now decided to leave it until light. Finally, to cap it all we are in a 1.5knot counter current and despite going through the water at 6.3knots all day we are only going over the ground at 4.8 hence our less than stellar progress.

That said, the weather has been pleasant and we had a nice dinner of Satay pork and noodles (although my Microsoft spell checker doesn't agree and keeps insisting we had Satan pork). I am hoping we can send this tomorrow by hoisting someone up the mast with the satellite phone, otherwise I will dictate it to Kim and ask her to send it from the real world.

Frustratedly and thinking of buying an Apple.

Chris.