" I'm not sure how I managed to get on this one, I think I may be on a lucky roll ! " Adrian said in Sydney when he heard the news he was staying with Concert until Cape Town. One of the Concert core crew had dropped out of the leg due to illness, Adrian had been invited to take his place.

" That'll be four legs then and I was just going to do one. But this is absolutely, positively, definitely the last. Otherwise it's my P45 for me in Cape Town. "

The leg from Sydney to Cape Town was going to be the most demanding of the Challenge. 6,000 miles, most of it in the freezing cold storm conditions of the Southern Ocean. We pick up Adrian's story of the leg from his diary, compiled from a series of Dictaphone voice recordings.

What a spectacular start ! The Sydney Opera House and the Bridge as a backdrop. Perfect weather, bright sunshine and a good breeze. Shorts and T-shirts. Most boats mucked up the start, we all seemed to cross the line late. Concert's start was by no means our best. We'd just completed a gybe to avoid another boat and crossed the line on a starboard tack. All the others were on port. We headed straight for the spectator fleet !!

Chris apologised. No need. We were getting on with it. Screaming at spectator boats to get out of our way. Some thought that we had planned it like this ! Our exit from Sydney Harbour resembled figure of eight stock-car racing. We screamed across the path of other yachts, narrowly in front of 3Com, ducked behind Nuke and Heath very nearly T-boned us. Everyone was near missing everyone else. Group 4 hit another yacht. Protests were being radioed right left and centre. Quite a buzz !

Concert squeezed passed the last marker buoy " shooting it " and out of the Heads, second behind Courtaulds. Once into the open sea we said goodbye to Sydney Tower on the horizon. We were first to hoist our Flanker - typical Concert attitude - and set a course for Hobart. Cape Town 5,900 miles away.

Much is made of the Sydney - Hobart Race. Billed as a bit of a " hard-man's " race. Hobart is 450 miles south-east of Sydney ( about 43S )... it took us 4 days. We knew that this was not even the start of our own race. Conditions could be pretty rough, but the sea temperature was nearly 20C. Not the same ballpark as the Southern Ocean.

In the event we had a " Southerly Buster ". Very sudden strong winds ( 40 knots plus ) from nothing, on the leading edge of the front. It didn't cause us too many problems, apart from a massive wrestle with the Genoa in ridiculous winds.

Concert were in the leading bunch all the way to Hobart. By the time we arrived, we were sitting in the middle of a high, with absolutely no wind. The fleet bunched up, 13 boats in sight, Hobart to starboard - a parking lot.