Radio call, 3 November, 03:45 UTC. A slightly less southerly option, a leak to bail, a broken Jetboil and fickle wind: Ambrogio takes stock before crossing the front.

Listen, all good in the end. The option scared me a bit, being a bit too extreme, too far south, so I shifted back a little.

But before talking strategy: life on board is fine. It’s hard though. I’m starting to have little rhythm problems. You see, I’ve got two or three small jobs to do. Nothing serious, but it takes a lot of energy, and on top of everything else you have to do the little fixes… It’s not easy. I’ve still got a Jetboil that doesn’t work, I’ve got a small leak, some water coming in at the back, so every now and then I have to get the water out. That’s taken quite a bit of energy.

But anyway, conditions are pretty chilled right now, the sea has flattened out a lot. Come on, we’re going to tackle these little fronts and then we’ll see how things go.

I suppose with this little front coming you really need to keep your eyes wide open?

Yeah, yeah, you have to stay focused. Right now I’m fighting the boat a bit, I’m struggling to make her go. The wind is very, very shifty. Anyway, I get the feeling I’m having a harder time than the others handling this phase. But it won’t be the only phase. So right now I’m shovelling a lot of coal in, trying not to keep digging myself into a hole.

But yes, for sure, we’ll be through the front soon. We’ve got good satellite images to help us, we’ve got friends ahead. It’s going to be pretty abrupt though: on the GRIBs it looks like the wind swings 180 degrees in 100 metres.

But after that it opens up downwind, it’s going to keep going fast. Nice prospect!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s back to downwind. There’s one option that stays a bit high on a reach to get back onto the depressions, but I’m not buying it, I’m staying downwind.

Then again, the whole leg up to here I sailed under the J0. I don’t know what sails the others had, but anyway it wasn’t the sail of the year, I think. I could feel a small deficit compared to what I usually feel from the boat. Now I need to decide on the next sail, and it won’t be easy, because I get the feeling the GRIBs aren’t all that accurate.