Ocean Rover may have been stuck in the Doldrums but sailor Jim Capstick was on the crest of a wave - he had just heard his wife Tracey had given birth to a baby girl.

Jim's message was just one of more than 3,000 channelled through Portishead Radio to and from the crews of the BT Global Challenge yachts since the round the world race began last September.

Portishead is a BT radio telephone communications centre near Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset. It's based in a one-storey office a mile inland from where the River Severn starts widening into the Atlantic. The centre's main task is to be a voice and data link with world shipping, using high frequency radio and telex.

Manager Peter Boast said: "The more messages the better. We could do with a race like this every day. It is very satisfying to bring people together in this way."

The team of 25 can barely see South Wales on a clear day but can talk to people many thousands of miles away using satellite signals.

One of those people was Ian Drayner who sailed on Save the Children on the first leg from Southampton to Rio de Janeiro. His call to wife Alison from somewhere near the equator was, he says, one of the highlights of the race.

"We just wanted to know the other was OK," he said. And then there was the matter of the football results to be discussed with his seven-year-old Newcastle United supporter son Ian. "It was strange being thousands of miles from anywhere and talking to my family."

So often the calls are not about big news, just family chat and reassurance that all is well. It's one-way transmission so there's no interrupting.

There must be something romantic about a call from out at sea. Robin Haynes phoned from Concert to check the flowers had arrived - and to ask about his daughter Kirsty, then only four months old. His call from the Atlantic left wife Kathryn "bowled over and speechless". Meanwhile, Simon Chalk phoned from Save the Children to tell fiancee Susie he couldn't wait to see her.

It isn't just phone calls that Portishead handle. There are faxes as well.

When Portishead was out of reach, sailors used local radio communication centres such as Sydney Radio. Janet Tipper, on board Pause to Remember from Wellington to Sydney, said: "I booked a call to my husband Matthew. He was climbing Mount Cook and I wanted to know he was all right."

* One of the Portishead Radio team is rather special. He's Sparks, the much-loved seven-year-old ginger (for luck) cat. But when Sparks ran across a computer keyboard and almost lost a 200-word message, he almost lost all his nine lives as well. Some say he considered running away to sea...