Battling Dartmouth soldier Cayle Royce and the all-military Atlantic rowing team are now less that 814 nautical miles from the finishing line.

Cayle and the four-strong Row2Recovery team tackling the 3,000-mile Atlantic row have slipped in to third place in the challenge after claiming the second place spot since they set sail 38 days ago.

The team have only just been overtaken by the UK's Atlantic Polo team – another four-man rowing squad.

Since they set out from the Canary Islands, Cayle and the team have spent Christmas and New Year on board their tiny ocean-going rowing boat and have had to cope with storms, huge seas and a terrifying capsize – in which they lost some of their stores along with Chirpy, the boat's teddy bear mascot.

The latest crew blog from Cpt James Kyall, who served with Cayle in Afghanistan, said it was hoped that the weather from now on will be coming out of the east 'and that's more on our tail hopefully all the way to the finish'. He added: 'Since the Atlantic Polo team passed us we still seem to be matching them for speed. They have got themselves in a good position and we will have a challenge to get past them again.

'We are really pleased about their success – they were the one crew that we hung out with the most and we got on with the best, so it's cool to see them do so well.

'It is particularly entertaining given that they did not have a clue about this beforehand.

'They even had a fishfinder on board to check for sharks – it was hilarious.'

With Cayle in the Row2Recovery boat are Cpl Scott Blaney of the Grenadier Guards who lost a leg in Afghanistan; Cpt Mark Jenkins a physiotherapy officer with the Royal Army Medical Corps; and team leader Cpt James Kyall who served with Cayle in the Light Dragoons reconnaissance force in Afghanistan.

Cayle lost both his legs and suffered other major injuries in a Taliban bomb explosion 19 months ago.