Leg 6 to Auckland, day 12 on board MAPFRE. Xabi Fernández.
What a leg we are having again! To be honest, a bit crazy on board MAPFRE where things have been changing dramatically the last days.
Of course we are struggling right now at the back of the fleet but we do really have hopes of getting much better in this leg. There are still so much to come in the Salomon Islands, that make us think this leg is giving us another chance. Let’s see if it does and if we can take it.
Things are all good on board. We had very good moments in the trade winds where we pretty much run a two-boat testing with DNGF and made us improve a lot.
I remember with the VO70s we would normally end up knowing the boat by the end of the race and this time we were not expecting to keep improving so much during this edition as we already have sailed once the whole way around the world on this same boat. But the truth is we are still learning and the two or three days in the trades made us learn a lot, so we take this as a massive positive from this leg.
Of course we have struggled again in the first part of the Doldrums where Scallywag and AkzoNobel have done an amazing job, so I only can hope for them to stop again and have the chance of catching them.
Weather is not great these days: humid, raining… We can’t really get the boat dry but at least we are moving and is not that hot, I guess.
Let’s see how the next days develop and what our chances are.
Best,
Xabi.
