We started Friday off by doing a last tack, which put us in the centre of the fleet, in a safer area. 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. Full throttle and without looking back, that’s where our eyes should be. To windward “SCA” and “Brunel” looked solid and in good speed. You can see their massive MH0 from miles away, and on board we try to guess which cloud will slow them down, and which will help them move up.
As I mentioned in a previous blog, the bungee effect is on and like the pack in a cycling race, whenever someone moves away the pack soon swallows him back again due to the lack of wind or a shift gone wrong.
We had “Dongfeng” within reach the whole day long, and we pushed all we could to pass between the shifts and the clouds, and not be able to pass them to leeward came unexpected.
It’s pretty disappointing to have a rival just in front of you and not being able to leave him behind “biting the dust”, but this is sailing, and the race is like this. You spend 20 days sailing neck on neck with the others down to the last minute, and all comes down to the last minute.
As far as life on board is concerned, we run out of dulce de leche, although I’d rather not talk about this, since the others just finished it up and I had almost none of it. It’ll be difficult to get any supplies in Newport.
We all moved to the bow again, where we hadn’t been back since Leg 4. Leg 5 was exactly the opposite, all the weight to the back and windward, but with the lack of wind we have to move all our stuff and personal things back to the front so that the aft remains almost empty.
Ñeti’s fully recovered and the anti-inflammatories worked really quickly, he needs to rest and load up on energy. Xabi covered for him and he’s now doing his Skipper watches again.
#vamosMAPFRE
Francisco Vignale, OBR