Since I last wrote to you, Azzam and her finely tuned athletes have completed the following; 3 freeze dried meals, 6 packs of biltong, 16 Kit Kat chunky bars, 2 tins of nuts, 3 packs of wine gums, 4 sheets of chocolate, 1kg of meat and cheese + tortilla rolls, 4 ramen noodles packs, 1 pack of short bread and 75 liters of water. Oh yes, and one sail change.

Depending on your own dietary habits this might be considered savage, on par, or maybe even healthy? While it’s hard to fathom that this menu could ever fall under the realm of healthy, consider it from an energy standpoint. Energy lies in calories, and extremely calorific food items are both tasty and necessary onboard a Volvo Open 70. During the colder legs, a crewmember will burn anywhere between 6,000 and 8, 000 calories per-day. If you do the math between 11 guys, this menu that I have laid out for the past 24hrs falls far short.

However, we are not on a cold leg right now. Nor have there been many sail changes, stack shifts or even course changes for that matter. The pace, in which we are all consuming “energy” at the moment, is indeed purely driven by boredom. While the racing remains tight and focus levels are high, we find ourselves in a rare moment of the leg where physical stamina is not required nearly as much to get through the day. It’s also a chance to catch up on some of the weight you may have lost in the previous legs. Easy to say for the media guy!

In other news on board, we have run out of the fresh fruit that we had collected while in the Maldives. Wade cut up the last pineapple yesterday as everyone sat on the rail with cupped hands waiting for him to pass by and shovel a piece in their direction. It made a mess of the deck, but was worth the hassle. The savouring of the final bit of fruit also helped break up the argument about mealtime adjustments that has now plagued the boat for days. Again, driven by boredom. More to come…