A happy Amer Sports Too crew have finished leg 2 of the Volvo Ocean Race at the end of a marathon 6550 nautical mile voyage from Cape Town, South Africa.

Amer Sports Too crossed the finish line off the Sydney Opera House at Sydney at 2.59am local time on Friday, after 26 days 4 hours 59 minutes and 22 seconds at sea.

After completing customs formalities, the crew was met by the shore team with birthday cakes for Keryn Henderson and Liz Wardley whose birthdays were on Wednesday and Thursday last week.

Skipper Lisa McDonald spoke after the finish:

“It was quite a difficult leg, two legs in one – the first from Cape Town to Eclipse Island, the second from Eclipse to Sydney. We had a few minor breakages, but that’s all it takes. The boats in this race are so close, even blowing a sail can cost of lot of miles in down time.

Overall it was good leg. At Eclipse Island we managed to make up a lot of lost ground, but other yachts were far enough in front to get into another weather system and we missed it.

We saw potential in the weather by staying north. If we had gone south we would have sat there and wallowed for a few days and we might not have been in until Sunday. We had to make the most of what we had. You’ve got to learn to get the most out of your boat and your crew for each situation. For example, we sailed all the way up the NSW coast with the big spinnaker up, big breeze and we didn’t have too much of that in the Southern Ocean.

There were real lows when we got behind initially, and great highs as we were catching up. When we’re with the other boats, we actually have very good boat to boat racing with them. The difference is, the other guys have all had one to three year’s preparation and we’ve had just one month before the start of the race. That means we have to accept that it will take a couple of legs to build the crew. It doesn’t happen overnight.

We’re all professional sailors here and it’s a job as well as something we all enjoy doing. It’s an incredibly tough fleet. Look around you. The guys have done Olympics, America’s Cups and five, six, seven Whitbreads. You can’t expect us, with experience of one round-the-world race to compete immediately against six or seven. We’re giving it our all, every step of the way.”