At 0830 this morning team movistar sent this report.

We are nearing the south Portuguese coast, and it looks like we have at
least saved the boat, as the wind has dropped now to an acceptable 15
knots. All yesterday we had sustained winds between 30-50 knots, with
massive waves where were pounding us side on. Not very pleasant,
especially when you don’t know if the remaining structure would stay in
one piece.

A very busy day on the phone, backwards and forwards with the shore team
and the race-management. We finally have decided the first port of call is
Portimao at the south tip of Portugal, so that the experts can have a
first look at the damage . From there several options are open. Stick the
boat on a truck, and drive it to the nearest big port for shipping it to
Cape Town. Or do the repairs locally, what will mean flying in a big
building team, and with the danger not making it in time to Cape Town.

Of course we have been following the results of the other boats. It seems
like that the Farr boats are doing just fine. Our feeling was always that
if we could hang on to the ABN boas in big breeze, we would be able to
sail past them in the medium-light conditions. As you can see already now
having a spinnaker pole is nice, you can run more efficient. Brasil 1 and
Ericsson have gained lots of miles. All our testing showed that clearly
and we have never understood why the ABN boats have gone without them.
Also the Pirates have dropped off their pole, maybe a bit desperate, to
try to find last minute a miracle performance gainer. They will have a
hard time to keep up with the others in spinnaker pole conditions.

Well so much for that, we are the big losers of this leg, the others will
laugh their heads off. The boat with the most miles has gone to port. I am
not the happiest person right now, scratching my head, why this could have
happened after all these miles. Have we been pushing to hard? Yes of
course we were pushing hard, but we have done that before. We were fully
under control, sail changes in time and just sailing faster than the
others, because we knew the limits of this boat and ourselves.