Leg 3 in the bag after hair-raising ups and downs

WE’VE done it. We have won Leg 3 of the Global Ocean Race!

Words can hardly describe how thrilled I am. It is one of the hardest things I have ever done. I have lost 15kg, but here we are on dry land again and we can proudly tick off the three goals we set ourselves: first to the midway Southern Ocean scoring gate, first to Cape Horn and first to the finish off Punta del Este, Uruguay.

“Relentless” is the word that most aptly describes our 31 days, 18 hours, 37 minutes and 30 seconds victory dash across 6 300 miles of the world’s most desolate and notoriously treacherous waters of the southern Pacific and Atlantic Ocean from the start in Wellington, New Zealand.

Icy cold and wet, really big waves and howling wind and almost extreme solitude.

Yet we kept pushing our Class 40 yacht, Cessna Citation, 110 percent.

The weather gods threw everything at us and, just four days into the race, two of the double-handed teams in our five-boat fleet were forced to turn back to Auckland because of injuries and damages. Then there was the eerie unease of being utterly becalmed in the so-called Furious Fifties of the south Pacific. Worse, after leading the fleet for 18 days, we sat helpless in zero wind as our nearest opponents, Marco Nannini and Hugo Ramon on Financial Crisis, bore down on us to steal our hard-earned lead.

We saw myriads of storm petrels and albatross and hourglass dolphins, which look like baby killer whales. We sailed close to Point Nemo – the most geographically remote piece of water on the planet – and then the legendary Cape Horn. Racing around that infamous Cape was the realisation of a lifetime of dreams for me.

We only regained our top spot just before our hair-raising approach to Cape Horn, when we decided to run the gauntlet in lashing hail and breaking waves to outpace the worst storm of the race.

The last four days of the race were nerve-shattering. After the Horn, we were expecting to strip off our oilskins and enjoy sunshine, but instead it was a crazy charge up the Argentinean coast in 40 knot winds gusting up to 50 knots.

Then, the last two days were frustratingly unpredictable in almost no wind. About 40 miles from the finish, we were suddenly surrounded by seven water spouts. They look like tornadoes high in the sky and then they come diving down in big gusts to hit the water with massive twirling spray.

Then, 12 miles from the finish we just stopped dead again in no wind.

It was an achingly slow finish up the Rio de la Plata before we finally crossed the finish line at 6.37.30 (local time) on Wednesday evening.