MacArthur's diary - day nine

In her latest email to BBC Sport Online, Ellen MacArthur talks about her crew's progress after they initially took the wrong course option.

The southerly option we took yesterday didn't really pay off. We got stuck in the centre of a depression and lost a lot of ground.

We drove the boat flat out through the night to go as fast as possible, but when passing through the Straits of Gibraltar we had some really difficult seas, very boat breaking, with 1.5 to 2m waves.

So we headed a little north and now we have found a much calmer sea that is enabling us to make progress.

We are lucky to have caught up the rest of the fleet.

Hoping that if the wind picks up again we will be able to keep up or even get ahead.

But therešs lots of work to do with the weather.

The Mediterranean part represents a quarter of the race, so therešs still a long way to go.

Ellen