Best of the internationals What did the non French Class40 skippers say

Pietro Luciani (ITA) third with William Mathelin-Moreaux (Les Invincibles): 

"The start was one of the worst I can remember but finishing now on the podium is one of the pinnacles of my career. When it came to making the choice going north or south we had a complete blackout we were dealing with and so that was the option. But the two boats ahead of us were next level we are proud to share the podium with them.

Alberto Riva (ITA) 7^th overall on Ekinox with Benoit Sineau:

 “It's fantastic, it was a fantastic race a little outside of what we planned for because they're supposed to start and go from Le Havre to Martinique to arrive here, instead we had to stop in La Coruña where there was this small Spanish leg where we were able to fix our boats and from there we can take this second leg which in any case changes the spirit of the race because from there is all based on total time. Then the second leg was incredible because the fleet was divided in two, half in the north, half in south, so it was fascinating. It was really is a beautiful race full of choices, of beautiful situations, we've been dreaming about this for many years.”

Milan Kolacek (CZE) 8^th overall Inland Roots Ocean Soul with Pierre Brasseur. 

“The conditions were quite challenging at times and it was a long race but the race was nice. I thought before that it would be a tough race for me and it was, it was tight with all the boats and really we were in a race with other boats all the time. You imagine you will stretch out and be on your own sometime but really it was a tight race all the time and so very tiring, always intense and so mentally quite hard and long. I loved the race I enjoyed it, I am happy to finish like this with Pierre because the project was late, we had only a short time and we had a very little time to prepare the boat ourselves. It is amazing to be finished. 

Luca Rossetti (ITA) 6^th on leg 2 with Matteo Sericano (ITA) sitting in 16^th overall but will likely drop as had to repair in Cherbourg on leg 1: 

“It was a complicated race looking at the weather forecasting and strategy situation, finally I think we were able to achieve the maximum possible. At the end we are sixth on this leg which is good and I think the first three boats were untouchable, they were in another race. Bleu Blanc and Solidaires were a long way in front of us and we caught them but it was hard to pass them but finally the last few days we sailed really really well, we tried to do our best but sometimes under the thunderstorms and clouds it was quite difficult to always find the good positioning. Having to stop and repair on the first stage is hard to take now because finally the boat was really good and we sailed well. We just had that one electrical problem on the delivery, we managed to fix it in Le Havre but I made a mistake and burned out the electrical piece and that made it impossible to charge the batteries and so we had to stop in Cherbourg. We lost a lot of hours in the end but that is life, it is a mechanical sport. I think on a race like this it is so hard to make all the right, good decisions all the time. Some points we manoeuvred too much, other points we were a little bit late in transitions, but in the end if you are losing two miles, then two miles, then two miles it all adds up. 

Sanni Beucke : "....a big challenge...'

Susann ‘Sanni’ Beucke (GER) 18^th overall with Sacha Lanièce on Alderan: 

“It was a big challenge for me from Germany where there is not so much of this kind  of offshore racing so I was out to learn and to get here, and now getting here it is not obvious all the problems we had on the first stage and how hard it was to keep going. We lost a spinnaker we had repairs to do and things like that and so we had to overcome all of that. But it was all good experience and good to learn for me, I did not know about the trade winds and the squalls – Sacha did a bit from her Mini Transat and so on – so that was new to me. Although we started in April really at the end in the last few days we really felt we knew the boat and the little trimming things that it likes to go fast. So it was a race with a lot of ups and downs for us.”