MAKING WAVES:Conditions are absolutely idyllic – all balmy temperatures and crystal blue seas – but there's no chance to appreciate them as we look for any advantage to help us reel in the leaders

WHAT A difference a week makes. Although we’re still at sea on Groupama and likely to be until tomorrow – which is almost four days longer than originally expected – our progress from the back of the Volvo Ocean Race fleet has been pretty good.

After leaving Itajai in Brazil 17 days ago, we were firmly stuck in fifth place as Ken Read on Puma tore away and has held the lead for the leg ever since. However, as expected last week, opportunities for gaining ground arrived with the early end to the trade winds.

At the weekend, we eased ahead of Ian Walker on Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing and started looking towards the podium boats, and on Sunday night we rolled Iker Martinez on Telefonica as the elastic band stretched in our favour at last. We’ve been able to hold them off by about 15 to 20 miles since then.

We got ahead by taking a more westerly route past the Turks and Caicos Islands where we founded better breeze. So we now have the Spaniards chasing us up past the Bahamas where once again we have opted for a more Westerly route as a high pressure system moves over the race course to the north so we’re hoping for slightly better pressure on this side.

Even though it’s light and there have been a few stops, it hasn’t been a lottery. Most of the boats are following a similar strategy of staying to the south side of the high. Ahead of us, Read has done a terrific job of holding first place for so long. Chris Nicholson on Camper is in second place about 15 miles behind him. We probably won’t be able to get to the front of the fleet with barely a few hundred miles remaining. But we still have our eye on Nico and could yet grab second place.

That all assumes we can stay ahead of Telefonica and right now we seem to be matching them on boat-speed though in such light conditions nothing is certain.

Third place for us into Miami would be a very satisfactory result, especially given our position for the first week of this 4,700-mile leg. Getting one place ahead of Martinez would reduce his overall lead to just 11 points with three legs remaining. In that scenario, we would hold second place overall but both Camper in third place and Puma in fourth would compress hugely on points so the standings will be very finely balanced.

Read is probably the biggest threat and whether or not he wins this leg, Puma will be a very dangerous boat for the remainder of the race, both for our hopes of overall victory and possibly even for Martinez as well.

The next 24 hours will be crucial and maintaining forward boat-speed and avoiding a fleet ‘park-up’ will be vital.

It’s an intense situation that requires us to maintain full concentration non-stop.

All our efforts are going into the smallest adjustments to the set-up, such as trimming sails by one or two centimetres rather than several dozen, constantly adjusting our dagger-boards and non-stop tweaking of our canting keel angles. We’ve also been dealing with large banks of Sargasso weed that catches in our appendages (keel, rudders and dagger-boards) and require constant attention and even slowing down at times to clear the dragging weed. Easy enough by day but at night, even with the full moon, it’s been a lot trickier.

Still, it’s the nicest sailing imaginable with balmy temperatures on deck and surrounded by crystal blue seas. If someone was to join the boat for a day in the middle of all this, we’d have an impossible job convincing them that this is a tough race, life at the extreme and all that; it’s pristine and just idyllic.

However, after the punishment of the previous leg through the Southern Ocean, we feel we’ve earned this and provided we don’t let our concentration slip then that’s fine. Our skipper Franck (Cammas) is excellent at keeping all 11 of us focused and the end is in sight. But if things pan out as we predict, the leaders will possibly extend or at least remain unchanged as the conditions will start to favour the first boats so it won’t be easy to catch them.

In the meantime, our intention is still to give Camper a good bloody scare going into Miami and if we can manage to finish in this position, then I think we can call it a successful leg. Hopefully we will be rewarded.