Cornic's Valentine's date...

Cornic is just enjoying his final miles, and said last night, “After the storms and everything, arriving in this much calmer phase on the one hand, you want it to go a bit faster to enjoy these last moments of feeling the boat surfing at full speed, but this finish in slow motion is also a way to unwind from this round the world trip before arriving on land. It's maybe not so bad after all.” 

He adds, “The return to land? It is hard to go from nothing to everything in human terms, but to have had this quiet period of little time before arriving because it allowed me to have a little more contact with people, to take my time. As a result, I am a little less anxious about the arrival than at the start, when I really thought that for me, returning to land after so many days all alone was really going to be an ordeal. In any case, it is an ordeal.” 

And Heere's ollie...

After Antoine, Ollie Heer is counting down the miles to his finish which should be late Sunday or early Monday, “Yes you can very much say I feel like I am back in home waters and in the home stretch. I am just gybing around the Azores and then I will be pointing at Cape Finisterre especially today as I was a bit surprised by the intensity of this front, I had 50 knots of wind and a wind angle of 125 to 130 degrees and five metre swells, so it was very. Very uncomfortable and very full on. So after the gybe tomorrow I will have 10 or 12 hours of reaching in almost 30 knots with no keel  on port which will not be very nice before I can gybe back on to starboard which then takes me past Cape Finisterre and into the Bay of Biscay. So the finish is not too far away but it still feels a long, long way away. I am not trying to think about it I am just keeping the boat in one piece and myself. The weather conditions are not consistent across the Bay of Biscay and there might be very little wind, so we will see….”

And China’s Jingkun Xu is just about 100 miles behind, “I finally chose to go to the south of the Azores because going the north there were too many uncertainties. The depressions move very quickly and we are more likely to have big storms. So I chose the southerly route which is safer and more stable. At the moment, there are 35 knots of wind and I am making progress at 20-25 knots in waves of 3 to 4 meters. It slams a lot. In the next 48 hours, there will still be a lot of wind, but the direction will be a little more favorable to get closer to the finish line. The last miles are not the easiest part because the conditions in the Bay of Biscay are very complex. Many boats have had damage here and I have to be very careful for this part but of course, the fact of getting closer to the 1000 miles to go will be a real milestone.