After several hours looking for the shift, we finally found it. It feels good to know that we won’t have to tack again in six days time. For now we’ll just have to sail to the north of Brazil and then cross the Equator.

From 20:30 UTC we were expecting a 50º shift and a tack with it which would put us heading NW. But it’s 06:00 UTC now and nothing’s happened, although we found ourselves doing one tack after the other.

From the beginning Iker said, “the sails must be looked after as if they were our girlfriends, they are the boat’s engine.”

Talking with Bochecha, relaxed after the great farewell in Itajaí, he mentioned this part of the race is like an F1 bend where the car goes at the limit and the weight of the pilot becomes critical.

Things haven’t changed much since the start. The fleet sails together without major changes to it. Some sail changes but nothing out of the usual.

We switched to offshore mode and the watches got started. Sometimes at the start of a leg the whole crew remains active until late in the night, but yesterday 2 hours into the leg we realized we were ready, and stuck to the watches.