That was a tough and complicated leg. I’m back ‘home’ now in Italy - where I grew up - and it was amazing to sail into Genoa yesterday, to be welcomed by so many people, to hear crowds of people speaking Italian again! But my mind keeps tripping back to the last three days of racing and what I could have done differently as the nominated navigator, and what we could have done better as a team.

We had a decent idea of our game plan before the start - we really wanted to push to get the two points at the scoring gate just after the start - that was our biggest objective. And we missed a tack, which got us stuck offshore, and that was our first mistake.

And then after the gate I think I just wasn’t bold enough to push further to the west to catch the breeze earlier on - we were too conservative and stayed on a straight line between the two way points, which lost us some distance. We did a sail change we probably didn’t need to do and should have stayed with our versatile J0, and that was another small mistake of the leg. At one point we had five miles of lateral distance with the leaders, but with the patchy areas of wind, the other boats were getting into more breeze earlier and faster and were able to capitalize on it. The rich were just getting richer…

It’s a real responsibility to be in charge of the navigation - which is a new experience for me. I’m not a Navigator (with a capital N!) but thinking more about the next few years and what I am going to have to be responsible for when I am racing by myself on the boat, I know I need to be an all-round performer. I understand weather and patterns pretty well, but am not a professional Navigator [capital N!] … yet … so it was a real responsibility to make the decisions on behalf of the whole team. I was so happy to have Loïs and Boris with me to share the load, have conversations and exchanges about what I could see on the screens.

Sometimes it can be easier to have group decisions, but also sometimes harder because there isn’t one strong voice that makes the calls. You have a lot of different points of views with people seeing things in slightly different ways, so you sometimes lose time ot making a decision fast enough, or a decision is made that isn’t exactly what you wanted.

If you have one person fully in charge of the navigation, it’s one call from one voice. I know other teams have that structure and I think in the next leg we will try something similar, a specific navigator who is off-watch, who can take the time to look at the weather, understand the patterns, and review all the data.

What I am really enjoying about sailing with this team is soaking up the atmosphere onboard, which is really positive. I was happily surprised about how we dealt with the frustrating moments - we didn’t want or expect them to happen, but no one gave up, we pushed the boat, and tried to sail fast, right to the very end.

At the end of the day this is racing and sport. Of course it sucks when you aren’t doing well, no one likes to lose, but it is what it is. We need to move on, learn, and apply our learnings to the next leg.

Onboard, each of us respected the fact that everyone else was doing their best efforts to do their very best and sail well. I always think there is no point becoming negative or grumpy because the result doesn’t change, you just have a worse experience and so does everyone else around you! I think it is important to remember that we are having the opportunity to sail against some of the very best sailors in the world, on incredible boats, in amazing events. We always need to respect that and keep a smile on our faces and keep racing well.

And being on Malizia-Seaexplorer and racing every day is fantastic for when I take the boat over myself at the end of this race and my on-water campaign with 11th Hour Racing really begins. I am learning something new every day and am definitely more comfortable now when we have issues on the boat. I know where to look for solutions - even on the technical side - I know how to disconnect and connect the systems, where things are stored on the boat, so that is a really positive thing for me that only comes from spending time sailing and racing.

Having Boris onboard for the last couple of legs has been good because he knows the boat so well. Every time something is not right, or there is the wrong sail, he can just feel it. He’ll be asleep in the bunk, and will wake up and say “I don’t know about us sailing with the J3 right now” and I’m like, “How do you know - you were asleep?!” but he can just feel things because he has spent three months of his life on the boat, on his own, listening and hearing every single noise, every single movement of the boat, knowing when it is set-up correctly or not. So that's a really valuable experience that I'm getting, having him sharing this knowledge in race-mode.

Will Harris comes back for the next leg so it will be him plus Boris, Cole, and myself. Will has really high skills in navigation and I trust him a lot about his decision-making as he is very precise and does a lot of homework to get ready for the legs. He has had some time off now with his family, so he comes back with new energy, recharged batteries, new eyes, and fresh feelings for this final leg.

Everybody thinks of Genoa as home, but actually Boka Bay is much closer to where I grew up on the Adriatic Sea in Trieste. It isn’t every day that you get to sail an IMOCA in that part of the world, so I’m looking forward to it. Montenegro is a country I have never been to and everyone says the place is quite amazing. It is cool that racing like this brings us to new places and new cultures; it does really connect Europe!

I’m back ‘home’ now in Italy after a tough fourth leg to Genoa

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