Finishing lines: Alexia Barrier (France) and Joan Mulloy (Ireland) - 4myplanet

Joan Mulloy: We were emailing (Pip Hare Ocean Racing) them and signing off: ‘sail fast! But slowly please (laughs).’ It’s amazing to cross another boat after so many miles of racing, but also we really didn’t want her to be that close to us. We wanted her to be behind us, but to have Pip that close to us, really made us push so much harder and I think it made us as live the race. Their spinnaker is about the size of  France!

We felt like we were pushing hard for the whole race, but when you can see another boat and then the whites of their eyes, definitely we pushing really hard. In the middle of the night we were both really, really tired but we could see Pip coming with the spinnaker and we kept saying, ‘are we going to put the spinnaker up? It’s too early…’ Both of us were up on deck waiting to put the spinnaker up. 

Alexia Barrier: I think our route was good, our strategy was good and with this boat we couldn’t have done better. It’s really difficult to get speed and we did the best we could with this boat and these sails. No regrets.

Mulloy: Yes, I think we sailed a really tight course, and as few miles as we could possibly have sailed and we’re really proud of that. We just didn’t have the sail power to back it up.