A night of drama and a hard fought podium result into Cape Town

This is just a brief message to say that we've crossed the finish line to take third in the first leg of the Global Ocean Race managing to keep Cessna behind to the finish. Paul and I are absolutely exhausted but incredibly delighted. We have given absolutely all we had to give to achieve this result... It was not as straight forward as it first may seem, however close the battle was on the tracker drama unfolded thickening the plot in the darkest hours of the night. Just after the 9pm position report we had gained just enough miles to start believing it was going to be possible, we had 22 miles lead with 150 to go and at that stage we were better positioned relative to the finish line and polling higher speeds. Then a sequence of events that can only have been conceived by a Hollywood story writer we had some of the most difficult moments of the race... surfing at 15-17 knots the tack line of the big spinnaker broke, the kite was left flying and wrapping and it took us a good half an hour before we had it down... we tried to fly it again, from the bow rather than from the bowsprit but the sock was twisted and we couldn't get it to open... so we changed for the A6, the smaller spinnaker, in the hope that thanks to the surfing waves we could have managed just enough speed and still win with our 22 miles lead... flying the spinnaker from the bow was difficult as it kept collapsing and filling with loud bangs, after one of these the runner broke at the same time as the spinnaker exploding... we don't know exactly what happened, the spinnaker must have wrapped around the pulpit before filling as the pulpit has literally been torn out... lots of damage hence, a torn spinnaker, a broken runner and the pulpit... at this stage we thought there was little we could do, but we decided we'd check the position report, take stock and see what if any of the other sails we could fly. Here fate intervened, one of the emails that came through when we checked positions was from Cessna, they had also suffered damaged and were limping into Cape Town without spinnakers... the two incidents happened pretty much simultaneously leaving us with a somewhat bizarre race to the finish with just our mainsails and genoas... we had 28 miles lead by this stage, we kept going and even just under mainsail and genoa kept averaging around 10 knots thanks to the enormous swell that was getting us surfing regularly... We arrived to the finish line about 3 hours ahead of Cessna. Their white knuckle strategy backfired, and simultaneously left us with expensive damage that will run into the thousands of pounds to take care of but it was a spectacular and hard fought race to the very finish and we are looking forward to celebrate in Cape Town. More stories and photos of the finish to follow. If you'd like to celebrate with us and buy us a beer you can do so online at www.marconannini.com/help