Ian Lipinski (France), skipper of Crédit-Mutuel (Class40)

It's aweome! We've been heading south for an hour, we're happy. It’s been good since the weather.We are in a change mode now: it was a game of chess and now it will about pure speed for a few days. On board, there’s a great atmosphere, we’re on the attack, Adrien and I are getting on well, we have 20 knots of wind on a well-formed sea. The wind turned right, it's from the southwest now.

We’re not far from having some sun. Last night was misty. It was upwind all the way, but we still wanted to take the helm and make the boat talk in that strong wind. Our shift north? We still don’t know if it will be beneficial, but we think it's not that bad. We looked at IMOCA, we thought that the options were more pronounced for them. There are far more spectacular gaps (between them) than for us. We wondered this morning if the guys in the north (and west) were going to catch up, and then we thought of the guys in the south, who have much more enjoyable conditions to sail in than here! By tonight we’ll accelerate; we can’t wait!