Good morning Black Betty fans..

What a 24 hours has been. I am writing this now in a sweaty nav station, with all the hatches open and the heart-breaking sound of flapping sail cloth filling the air. A very different boat to this time yesterday. It certainly was an eventful night, let me fill you in on what happened.

We spent most of yesterday charging south under Mr Medium Weight the third, screaming down wind like a train. As it approached the point we needed to gybe and head west I decided that the best plan was to drop MMW 3rd, gybe and hoist the chicken chute (Code 3). Things were starting to get tasty. The drop, gybe, hoist went perfectly. Our new course was pretty good and we were off again. Thundering in to the night we continued under kite, Black Betty constantly picking up waves and surfing at great speeds.

Sitting in the nav station, just after midnight ships time, I was pondering whether to drop the Kite, or to try and gybe the Kite. We now had 30 knots of true wind, gusting 34. We really were pushing hard to try and reel the boats ahead of us in. Then Black Betty made my decision for me, or rather Black Betty's Black Cat did. Perched in the nav, I felt and heard the unmistakable, noise of a Kite halyard breaking. Well at least I didn't have to worry about how to get the Kite down anymore, every cloud has a silver lining and all that! Grabbing my lifejacket I was straight up on deck to assess the situation, whilst calling all hands as I went. Interesting would be one way of describing things. We were now going down wind, with a full main, and the Chicken Chute being towed from the bow sprit, and we were still doing 12 knots! Time for a bit of dynamic problem solving.

We winched the main in to slow the boat and calm the situation, then with Black Betty now calmed, as much as you can calm 70 foot boat in those conditions the team started working together to heave and drag the Kite in over the wire. It was all going well, but then it stopped coming in any more, it was stuck!

The next move was to try and go hove to, to try and get the wind on the other side of the boat, to make the kite on the high side. So in a rather unusual move, still with quite an amount of Kite in the water, we hoisted the Staysail. This worked perfectly, we got the bow round and then managed to further calm things down. We were now as close to being stopped as it was possible to get. Hove to, is the boat equivalent of putting the handbrake on and taking the keys out. With a slightly better view of the Kite situation we could now see that there was damage to sail, and its refusal to come back on to the boat suggested to me that it was caught around the keel. There was only one way to sort this out, a sad day for any sailor, cut the sail. With the leech of the Chicken Chute cut everything was freed up and the team heaved what was left over board back on to the deck.

The whole team then worked together to get the damaged sail off the deck into the sail locker before the off watch returned to their beds, perhaps a little more moist and definitely tireder. The on watch then set about getting Black Betty going again, it wasn't long and we were charging along again under white sails, in the black of night, with hot cups of coffee in our hands. All in all the whole episode cost us a little short of 2 hours, which obviously is less than ideal, but the main thing is that we succeeded as a team, in tough conditions and a dynamic environment the team did really well.

With the final 229 miles left to go along the west coast of Luzon it's anyone's guess as to what might happen, we are certainly a long way off yesterday's constant double figure speeds.

For now we can see Seattle on the horizon, GoToBermuda and Ha Long Bay, Viet Nam can't be far away, and as we saw on the last race, anything could happen on this stretch of water. Wish us luck for the last bit of the course, I think we might just need it.

Leg 6 crew, fear not, we are coming for you, I hope there are a few keen sewers amongst your number!

Black Betty OUT!