It is painful to watch as the Argos course that tracks Daedalus on her voyage around the world shows a thin red line wobbling along a course for Qatar.
The Argos tracking programme is programmed to show different colours for different boat speeds; red means that the speed in less than five knots. In fact a closer look at each poll shows some of the instant speed readings as low as three knots.
It seems that the northerly wind did not hold and a few hours later Daedalus was back into low single digits. There are in a transition zone between wind being generated by a small stationary low in the Gulf of Oman and a weak area of high pressure over Qatar. There should be a reasonable northerly wind blowing between the two systems, but judging by Daedalus's performance the real life situation does not correspond with the weather maps. So as the skipper and crew think longingly about that fine first meal that they will sit down to when they finally make dry land, they instead have to tuck into the last few stores left on board.
At least the are not bored. There is a lot of shipping of all kinds continually passing by, going in all directions, and for a while yesterday afternoon they were buzzed by a helicopter. The occupants seemed interested in what BULLIMORE and his team were doing, but after a while lost interest and flew over the horizon probably in search of bigger fish to fry.
At the 0600 hours GMT poll on Wednesday morning Daedalus was 130 miles away from the finish. If the forecasted breeze materializes they should be able to see the tall building of Doha before the sun sets on another perfect day in the desert.