Can there be any more surprises left?

Michel Desjoyeaux has pulled out a 500 miles lead on Roland Jourdain in the Vendee Globe. Even with the compression that will probably occur in the doldrums, that looks like too much to overhaul now as long as Desjoyeaux's boat holds together.

The winds became so heavy just north of Cape Horn last week that Brian Thompson made the prudent decision to head for shelter, making no headway for some time in order to stay south of the worst of the weather.

He and those around him - Dee Caffari and Arnaud Boissières - know they can't catch the leaders. Sam Davies in Roxy is also probably out of reach of Thompson now as she is nearly a thousand miles ahead. While the positions may change among the three behind Roxy its is difficult to see the running order change much nearer the front unless Davies can overcome the redress given to Marc Guillemot on Safran.

Steve White has stuck to his task on Toe in The Water and looks set to be rewarded with a top 10 finish. Getting round the world will be accomplishment enough for the relatively inexperienced and underfunded Englishman.

With less than 3,500 miles to go Desjoyeaux must be beginning to scent victory but those behind can't afford to slacken off. Everyone in the fleet will remember what happened to Mike Golding when in the lead. Equipment failure can happen at any time.

Thirty boats set out on this adventure. Twelve remain.

Rounding the Horn

As I'm writing this Michel Desjoyeaux is just about to start rounding Cape Horn in the Vendee Globe. It's a big day for the race because this is a place that stirs the heart of every sailor.

It brings back memories for me. Twelve years ago I rounded the horn from east to west in the BT Global Challenge race. Some might regard it as an ignominious rounding as I was in my bunk when we crossed the exact co-ordinate. It was during the night, there was nothing to see and frankly there seemed not much worth celebrating with thousands of miles of ocean to cross before New Zealand.

The Vendee sailors might view it somewhat differently. Some are heading there for the first time and all of them will be boosted psychologically once they have "turned the corner". One who will not make it is Jonny Malbon who has retired on Artemis because of his deteriorating mainsail. It's a tough end to what has not been a great race for Malbon.

Desjoyeaux, of course, could find his way round with his eyes closed. His boat seems to be sailing well and he doesn't report any problems. But then he prepared well. A lot can go wrong still and something probably will, but I wouldn't bet against him at this stage, unless I happened to be Roland Jourdain who knows the lead is well within his grasp. The more he can pressure Desjoyeaux, the more chance there is of forcing an error. But such pressure works both ways, as those following understand. Anything can happen in this last long haul northwards.

Three Sheets in the Wind

This was oh so nearly the title of my new blog, changed only because it might have given the misleading impression that I am inebriated much of the time. In fact it's only some of the time.

I never knew what the phrase meant until I looked it up on the web where it says it refers to sailors who have had a few drinks too many.

It was an expression used frequently in my family when I was growing up in Yorkshire. But there the phrase had a broader meaning. Yes, it could refer to someone who was the worse for drink. Alternatively it was used to describe someone who seemed nonplussed or confused, a condition that would account for much of my life.

Indeed when the waves are coming this way and that in a confused sea state I'd say it is a fair representation of my thinking patterns when sailing. Left brained and right brained thinking are meeting to create the perfect brainstorm.

Yachts are technical machines, designed to handle unstable systems. If understanding the numbers is a science, reading the wind is an art. Combining the two intuitively in race conditions requires the kind of skills for which I have the greatest admiration.

Add to this a whole new language, then you can begin to understand how someone who struggles enough with plain English might sometimes have trouble telling his luff from his leech.

So why do I do this stuff, not just casually, but the kind of racing where you have to tie your bowlines under pressure? It's a question I ask myself frequently. The answer always comes down to the same thing: it's the people.

For someone who works most of his time alone, I like the challenge of teamwork, the opportunity to be a human part of an imperfect machine, solving ever changing problems created by complex systems. Or maybe that's baloney and it's just the sea and the wind.

If you look in my sailing section here you can see the kinds of things I have done. I came late to sailing, having hardly stepped on a yacht before heading from Rio for Cape Horn and the Southern Ocean in the 1996/97 BT Global Challenge round-the-world race.

That shared experience of adversity led to new friendships and more sail racing. I even bought a dinghy and sailed that for a while. For the past three years, however, fishing has taken over much of my leisure time. Sometimes sailing and fishing have met head on, as they did when I took part in the Round Britain and Ireland Race in 2006, losing a day of my late summer trip to the River Dee as a result.

Now the Financial Times has asked me take over its sailing coverage. I have quite a few plans but I'm kicking off my new slot today with a piece about women in sailing, focusing on Sam Davies, competing just now in the Artemis Transat race. She's a lovely young woman and I wish her well.

For myself, I have no idea what the future holds but I know this much - it's going to be fun. So let's go sailing.