TELEFONICA BLUE EMAIL: 'We might have a surprise comeback'

Tuesday 24 March 2009, 0047 GMT

Telefónica Blue - Bouwe Bekking (Skipper)

The "bear from Santander" just came out of his cave, after a well deserved 6 hour winter sleep. You can feel that he reaches warmer water, and he is not talking anymore about how cold it is. His new subject is how hungry he is, and that with having all the food in the world available for him. He eats already after his dinner, an extra breakfast( muesli and yoghurt) and for sure somewhere just before midnight he will dig into the left over's from dinner.

I haven't seen a single day, that Gabry (Gabriele Olivo) did not have to throw out left over's. Maybe the cuisine is too luxury, with always having two choices for warm plates. Our two eskies (coolbox) have never seen the bottom. I can imagine that some boats have to start scraping their food together by now, but l am happy that we are not running out.

Today was big rig maintenance day. David (David Vera) has been gluing the reinforcement plate on the rig, and has fitted the emergency pin. We let it cure overnight and tomorrow we can hang the checks back up in the rig. I think it will be good enough, but it is and stays only a temporarily repair, so we leave the other two emergency checks up.

Made some nice gains today, who knows what is going to happen in the next 48 hours, we might have a surprise comeback compared to the Dragons, who we suspect are pushing more current than the maps show. I was speaking with Jono (Jonathan Swain) about this, in one race we saw up to 4 knots against us in the area where they are sailing and the guys offshore sailed right around us. But right now they are still well ahead, but it will be a good laugh if we could actually manage to pass them.

Received 0047 GMT