THE crew behind the North Atlantic rowing attempt are having problems sleeping.

Nigel Morris and George Rock, of Ingleby Barwick, near Stockton, along with fellow crew members Steve Dawson and Rob Munslow, are finding tiredness is slowing their reactions on their 2,100-mile journey from Canada to England. Here is their latest report:

"Ten minutes. Ten minutes." Pause, then "Ten minutes, hello, ten minutes." Now shouting, "Ten minutes, wake up, are you alive?". Then, from the cabin, there's a Neandathal-sounding grunt.

This is the scenario that we each go through every two hours, every day. It has without doubt got harder to wake up and leave the cabin and, as sleep deprivation increases, so too does the bizzare nature of our dreams.

So far we have had dreams about walking in potato fields, a murder (onboard), a buffet (Nigel's) and a lead role in Dr Who.

Tiredness also brings another side-effect, which is the slowing of reaction times.

To prove this you only have to look at our shins. In a car you do an emergency turn, on the ocean row boat you do a "shin stop".

To do this you need one tired rower a 1200kg boat, one oar and at least one shin. Then you need to catch a rogue wave, in doing this the oar should dig nicely into shin and promptly stop the boat.

Good news to share, we are enjoying Westerlies and they are predicted to stay until Saturday afternoon. Off to sleep now - back tomorrow.

Yours, The Spuds

Keep up to date with the crew's progress with regular reports in The Northern Echo