Sailing: Braced for my first Southern discomfort

It's been quiet – much, much too quiet so far.

We have been in the Southern Ocean for about a week, Kingfisher2 is down at around 50 degrees South and at night we have someone on iceberg watch on the radar. But something is still wrong with this picture: for nearly a day we have been going into the wind. This is supposed to be the Southern Ocean sleigh ride, not a leg of the west-about, wrong-way- around-the-world BT Challenge.

Actually the weather has been confounding skipper Ellen MacArthur and our shoreside router in Hamburg, Dr Meeno Schrader, as they try to take us round the world faster than anyone before. Sailing is notorious for the saying "it's not normally like this" but for the last week, since we dipped into the Southern Ocean, the sun has been out, the winds have been light and my first taste of the much-vaunted "real thing" has been denied me. That might all be about to change, however.

We have been trying to shake off an area of high pressure that extends from the African coast almost to where we are now for several days. Three days ago Ellen swallowed her nerves and made the call to dive south and we came down here with our hearts in our mouths and our eyes peeled for ice. So far, while the water temperature has been down to 4C and the air temperature has hovered just above freezing – last night I had my thermals on and I was inside a fleecy sleeping bag inside a full synthetic sleeping bag inside a waterproof Gore-Tex liner and it still took me three hours to warm up – we have seen neither ice nor any sign of strong winds.

But as I write this the wind has increased beyond 30 knots and swung to the north-west. These are the first signs of a deep low that is behind and to the north and due to pass behind and to the south of us (if it passes over us life will get very uncomfortable indeed with headwinds of up to 60 knots lashing us for several days). The signs are that the low is behaving as we need it to and already the wind has freed and increased, we have gone from full main and staysail to two reefs and a storm jib and as it moves behind us more the storm spinnaker is being prepared. We are ready for something punchy and we are urgent to do some big miles.

Despite our troubles getting going down here we are still in touch with the record. In the early morning of yesterday we were an hour behind the record holder Orange on a day for day basis with the advantage of being 500 miles further south; we are in "Lane Three" of the Southern Ocean race track, Orange was out in "Lane Five" so we are cutting the Antarctic corner and sailing a shorter distance. Also, up ahead and round Cape Horn, Olivier de Kersauson and the crew of Geronimo are suffering their own difficulties with the weather as they struggle to make progress north up the South Atlantic so they are by no means out of reach and there is nothing that a couple of big days down here wouldn't solve.

However, we need the wind to do what the forecasts say it should do and give us the 40 to 50 knots from the north-west over the next few days to slingshot us east down the Indian Ocean on towards Australia. This Jules Verne record attempt is very much alive and about, we hope, to be kicking.