Spinnakers. Today we blew out a spinnaker in the back garden of the Great Blasket Islands. The massive sheet was to be a lung full of air to blow us across Galway Bay and optimistically gain ground on the race leader, Cherokee. It took in the air, then coughed it out like a consumptive before frittering away in the wind.

They scrambled up from the catacombs beneath the deck where they sleep in the crevasses and racks slung up anywhere where there is no water and straight up to the bow of the boat where the force five was breaking water over the deck.

Flannery, the grinder-turned-Swat man was first to the rails reeling in the shredded sheets.

"It's like f***ing playing rugby in winter, isn't it? Smoking I am," cracked the Aussie. No crisis. They swarmed all over it, some half asleep, but soon the chorus had died to just the wash of the boat and the school of curious dolphins breaching over the bow - the way it ought to be at 4.40 in the morning.

If anything has been gleaned in this freefall journey it is that Bridgestone F1 is a 24-hour game show. It sets the questions. The crew answers them. All but four of the 21 on board have come across these problems before. Around the world Whitbread, Sydney to Hobart, Americas Cup, Cowes Week - they've done them all. Hardened professionals who carry around with them a childish gene.

"A champagne lifestyle," says captain Chris Sherlock "but on beer money".

The day turned soft and the rain fell in sheets of mist. At midday we frittered away another spinnaker to the winds before jamming on the brakes as a Donegal trawler sewed its nets 200 yards across our bow. Mike Slade, the wealthy owner of the yacht, laughs at the fisherman's sense of ownership of this stretch of the Atlantic ocean before a torrent of Donegal abuse arrives and sends the radio shuddering.

"Why do I do this," asks the owner to no person in particular. "Because after 40 or 50 years of work , it's nice to do something that gets you f***ing scared," he answers himself.

Hot tea arrives as the wet creeps into the bones. We are chasing a tide gate at Rathlin island which might surf us across the north-west coast as Cherokee struggles to sail against it, having arrived some hours earlier. That's our hopeful prognosis.

That's why we are on deck, trimming the sails in order to pressgang into work every last eddy of wind that passes the boat. It's 5 p.m. now and the rain becomes heavy. But the wind is up. That's what this is all about. Wind. Right?