Alex Thomson

We suddenly got hit by a rogue wave and then within a flash the boat was upside down, we were upside down for about a minute and a half before the keel turned it back up the right way.

When it fills with water you try not to panic, but it's difficult as when you're upside down there's no windows so you're totally blind, one of the doors was open, so water poured in. It was a bit of a shock to the system but then your survival mode just kicks in.

We had a problem with the boat, we think we hit something that damaged the front of the boat so we had to stop the boat to make a repair, we had to head to Spain to fix it so we could continue in the race. Then the weather got pretty bad -- for a little while 35 to 40 knots( about 65-75 kph) for a couple of hours. We decided to stop and wait until it moved away, to wait until the sea conditions were okay.

It's a dangerous game we're in, it's very relentless from start to end, and it's always like that. You can make good out of bad.