Neal McDonald Quotations

His quick thinking and knowledge of the system onboard Ericsson enabled him to lock the keel in the middle and keep sailing the boat to Cape Town ... the safety of the crew and boat were in his hands and he did us proud.

John came in as skipper in Rio and has had a careful look at all aspects of our campaign. The team has gained much from his input and will benefit from his continued involvement. I will be happy to take over as skipper again after the in-port race. We are very fortunate to attract such talented new sailors to the team and I very much look forward to working with them. We will work hard to keep on improving, and hope that our results will reflect the team's true potential. We will certainly keep on giving it all our energy.

It has been a tough race so far. We haven't had the results we expected. I feel as if I have been battling ever since that first night off Vigo.

We are obviously disappointed but at the same time we are keen to sort this out as quickly as possible.

We sailed very hard all through the race. It wasn't a technically hard leg, there were no icebergs or gales, but it was very physical, long and intense. So it makes the end result very sad.

It was like a slow torture of death. There were opportunities, we worked hard to make them work for us, but we just couldn't get there. We got back in touch thanks to a fortuitous weather change at the Horn, but slowly let it slip slide away from us. It was very hard work, psychologically very hard.

I?m relieved that I got through another amazing Southern Ocean trip in one piece, but also somewhat sad. Every time I get to this part of a round-the-world trip I look over my shoulder at Cape Horn and just wonder: will I be coming down here again? If not, thank you Southern Ocean for letting me cross you safely and for those unforgettable experiences.

Before we get into Baltimore there are going to be a variety of changes and obviously we are hoping to take advantage of them. The biggest challenge at the moment is to keep pushing at all times. The first week was very intense because everyday we saw one or two boats which made it very easy to drive everybody in the team. The last five to six days we haven't really seen another boat so it's like racing an imaginary electronic opponent. It's so important to keep fighting all the way to the end of this leg.