Quotes from the Dock:

Justin Clougher (AUS) – Pirates of the Caribbean

“It was a tedious leg with a rosy ending. We are happy to be here, we worked hard and we had moments of fear and loathing. It is a great venue to come to and it is a fantastic leg to do for all sailors.”

“The boat went quite well, we are very happy with it and overall have to be satisfied with this leg.”

“We were a late entry and knew it would take us time to get up to the speed of some of the other entries. You can see the entries that have spent most time on water are showing most speed. We gave ourselves the deadline that by Rio we would be up to the same speed, knowledge and handling of the boat as the other teams and I think we can say we achieved that goal.”

“The high point was finishing the leg and obviously getting a good result is a wonderful bonus. This is a monumental leg for all sailors and yachtsman - this is what the race is all about and this is what people think about when racing these boats.”

“The high point of this leg was seeing the boat perform - the thing goes like a bat out of hell. We saw what this boat was really made of and I hope we see it again.”

Paul Cayard (USA), Skipper – Pirates of the Caribbean

“This is an important result for team. We have been slowly progressing this project and we have a nice trend going; we were second in the Melbourne in-port race, third into Wellington, second round Cape Horn and second into here, and now we starting to show some consistency of being very competitive.

“We are racing the boat well. We have done a nice job of bringing the project along. The boat seems pretty solid, we didn’t break anything major, and that is a big improvement over Melbourne.”

Torben Grael (BRA), Skipper – Brasil 1

“It was unfortunate as we had a few breakages towards the end of the leg. We were forced to use our smaller spinnaker as we ripped the larger one and this affected our speed.”

“We are quite confident with the boats performance. We learnt a lot on this leg. We didn’t have a very good sail selection and we missed a couple of sails that we chose wrongly but despite that, we still managed a close finish.”

“The boat needs a lot of work as always but on the whole, we are happy with the speed and look forward to the next races.”

“The racing has been really good apart from the break downs. We know all of the boats are of similar speeds so it is quite fun – after 7000 nautical miles to have boats in-sight of each other it makes it a lot more fun. The boat is in very good shape after this long leg and the boat behaved beautifully in very tough conditions.”

“Now we have different conditions for the rest of the race, with a little less wind, which should make it better for us.”

Simon Fisher (GBR), Navigator – ABN AMRO TWO

“It was a really tough last few days for us. We were a little bit slower than Brasil 1 and they were grinding away at us and every position report we were slightly slower. The front came through early this morning and we thought we would push really hard, so we gained a little and then a little more.”

“There have been some real ups and downs in this race so we are absolutely stoked with third place. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.”

“The lowest point in the leg was when we were struggling in sixth place, sitting in no wind watching the boats take 50 miles out of us on each position report, was pretty tough on me as the navigator, but coming round Cape Horn and reeling them back in was pretty good. You have to take the rough with the smooth and it is a good example of never giving up.”

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