Skipper Chris Nicholson was in a frustrated but positive mood when he arrived in Sanya at 0728h local time this morning. "We thought and expected to do better than third, to be honest, but it's a difficult race... and we are with the best professional teams in the world," Nicholson commented.
CAMPER led the fleet on five separate occasions but the defining moment for the Spanish/New Zealand team came when they navigated the Malacca Straits. Getting stuck in a thunderstorm shortly after entering the notorious Straits, scuppered the team's plans to sail down the Indonesian shore line leaving them trailing in fifth position when the fleet arrived at Singapore.
However, with character, persistance, determination and good, solid sailing CAMPER pulled themselves up to snatch the final podium place.
Quotes from the crew:I’m pretty frustrated to be honest. We have potential to win races but if I think back a few days ago when we left the Malacca Sraits in fifth, we’re pretty happy to come here placed third overall. You’ve got to take the good with the bad.
I actually think we just have to hang with them [Telefonica] a little longer. They only need to be given an inch and they will take a mile. I’ve probably taken a while to form this opinion of how they are. They’re very strong across the board and I think we just have to hang with them, maybe take some losses when you’re not as fast as them, and wait till you’re faster than them.
Tony Rae
Obviously we're disappointed not to win one, but sometimes we were further backk than third and managed to claw our way back and make a decent showing of it. It's a long race and anything can happen. Telefonica are sailing well, very well. They're going fast. But when we are with themm we have to minimise the mistakes, and make it happen. It will happen.
Stu BannatyneI guess it’s still early enough in the overall race that we can’t be too disappointed with another podium. It’s not a disaster and it’s disaster legs that will lose you the race at this point, so we are just in touch. It is very frustrating that we are not quite doing enough to win a leg, but I’m sure our time will come. We’re hopefully keeping it close enough to keep it a tight race.
It was a very challenging leg in so many different ways, certainly physically with such a geographically constrained race course. We had lot of manoeuvres, watch systems often went out of the window for periods of hours, lots and lots of stacks, moving the stack from side to side, which is always hard work. The negotiation of local fish fleets at night, and dealing with all that side of it. Mentally and physically it was very tough.The Malacca Straits wasn’t a calm place for us - we lost a lot there. But the guys showed some character, fought back and we overtook two boats on the way in here. It’s a good sign for us that we can come back from a deficit. We are there or thereabouts, we’re knocking on the door. They (Telefonica) are a fast all round boat that’s for sure, so full credit to them, but we’ll catch them.”
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