200nm South East of New York

It now feels like we're a long way from anywhere. Our current position is 200nm South East of New York. We're under a big high-pressure system that has led to nice sunshine, and only a little north-west breeze, a pleasant consequence of which is that we're right out in the ocean but the waves are mainly a long, uneventful ocean swell.

It's 3pm. Sounds early, but we are planning for our night watches, storing stuff and getting headlamps and the like ready. I just took in the poled out genoa. It's a strange effect, but by day we occupy a huge disc of ocean, perhaps 50nm wide, and you can of course see from horizon to horizon in every direction. As dusk falls and the sun drops below the horizon, the disc rapidly narrows until our world becomes simply that little area across the cockpit and to the tricolour light on the masthead, swinging back and forth against the stars. No moon at the moment, so it's very, very dark at night, but you can stare at the stars and meteors arching across the heavens for hours.

We haven't seen another boat for at least 12 hours.

We just ate lunch. A delish (and wonderfully warm)chili that Greg's girlfriend Heidi made for us and froze. Although conditions today are quite mellow, it's nice to have a few pre-made meals in the freezer: certainly makes life easier, and in any kind of blow will be fabulous.

Last night we sailed over Hudson Canyon, a giant trench in the seafloor at the edge of the continental shelf. The depth then was less than 200' but is now 10,171'. Of course the sounder stopped receiving an echo long ago, so that number is from the chart. We're continuing to work south-south east (154 degrees)and will do so for another 45nm; by then we should enter the gulfstream. It's about 60nm wide, so it'll take us until the morning to get there. I'm eager to get across due to the sudden and highly uncomfortable storms the stream can dish up in a very short time, but also because it's still very cold at night. We've already seen the water temperature climb from 14 to 16 and now 18C.

Much of last night we were reaching at 7-8 knts with the full main and genoa out. I'm currently doing watches with Sylvain, and on our 12-3am we were visited by two dolphins who played in the pressure wave for more than on hour. It being dark we couldn't really see them but for the plumes of phosphorescence that was streaking off them. I went and lay down in the bow, and watched them swimming and jinking back and forth seemingly an arms reach away. Like all good people, I tried to make dolphin noises at them; these ones were not chatty, I suspect were deaf or mute.

Once we hit the stream, we'll adjust our course a little more east. We're trying to ride a meander, or eddy, in the stream to get a boost across. Unfortunately we're unlikely to see the dramatic change in water colour that the stream brings until dawn tomorrow morning. We're also told the fishing in the stream is amazing...we'll see, today we've had the line out and caught some nice seaweed, in keeping with this summer's experience.

Behind me in the cabin Greg and Dan are sound asleep. Three hours on, three off takes a bit of getting used to, so everybody is getting ahead on points in this calm weather. And also because around 3am we expect a squally front to pass through with winds to 30 knts and associated waves. Being dead smack in the middle of the gulfstream when it hits may make those conditions a little more dramatic than they would normally be.

We're having a blast. Great teamwork from everybody, lots of jokes and good feeling, and I'm enjoying watching Greg and Dan (on the other watch from Sylvain and I) confidently throwing this 43 footer around like a dinghy. Greg is currently in my sleeping bag. Only his face is sticking out of the full head covering and I keep thinking of Kenny from South Park, and giggling. I must look equally stupid when he's awake and I'm asleep!

I'm sending this to my sister in Auckland to post onto the blog. We shoot a digital signal from our single-sideband radio off the atmosphere, and to a base station in Nova Scotia, Canada. It then puts the message into the internet in the usual way. It's a bit fiddly, but so far seems to be working pretty well.