Relatively busy few days here. On Wednesday morning we passed the half way point of the trip. Not much celebrations really as we all understand there is still a very long way to go. Equipment failure and adverse weather conditions remain the 2 big unknowns. Of course it's nice to know that the long countdown to home has begun but 3-4 more weeks of this brutal schedule remains too much to contemplate at the moment. 

Yesterday we had the biggest low so far when our third and final autohelm arm failed. Having to manually helm from here would add 10-15 days to our crossing- time we could certainly do without. We spent a few hours working with Simon Chalk (most experienced Atlantic rower ever) who was kind enough to help and finally found a fix for the third arm. I cannot explain the relief when it successfully kicked into action. So far so good but we remain one breakdown away from disaster again - this crossing finds new and better ways to torture us everyday. We've now mobilised (thanks Helen) a number of internet forums (fora?) who are working on finding a fix for our first two arms - people really are great sometimes. 

Despite all this we are still on target for the World Record.



From Niall's blog