Normally, I’m a fairly optimistic person. Well, at the moment, I really can’t say I’m looking forward to the next 7-10 days. Yes, I do mean 10 days. My “arrival team” are getting to Antigua on Good Friday. Only a few days ago, I had high hopes of joining them within a few days at most. Now I’m just hoping to get there before they go home.

I do make life difficult for myself though. Having stayed up for nearly 48 hours, I had got myself to 16N20′. Not ground-breaking, but it was a start. Last night it was a real effort to keep that, and for a while I tried. But then I had to have a bit of a break. I hate using the para-anchor, purely on principle. But that would have been a good time to use it. Once I’d been blown 3 miles south, then I put it out. It’ll take me the best part of 6 hours’ rowing to get that back, and that’s without taking breaks.

Around this part of the ocean, winds should be broadly easterly, making it not too difficult to regain the northerly ground. This morning I got through a forecast for the next 5 days. Are you sure they’re not doing a Christmas special: “Jeremy Beadle - Beyond the Grave (now he’s got the gods at his disposal)”?

For the next 72hrs, the winds fluctuate between 45° and 70° (very briefly). But then it gets better; on Tuesday, they come straight from the north, before hitting me with 17kt NNE winds and 25ft NNW waves. That’s not going to be a barrel of laughs. It doesn’t improve much after that either.

So, I’m going to do my best to make the most of the next 36hrs. Normally, this would be considered bad weather. At the moment, it’s the best I’m going to get. But trying to motivate yourself to make progress at snail’s pace when there’s that to look forward to is not easy, especially when my right leg has decided 60 days was long enough.

I had thought the end was in sight. It’s never felt so far away.