You need a good dose of patience and humility when sailing neck and neck with the brand new boats and you can see with each mile that passes that little my little the favourites are managing to squirrel away a few extra miles, giving them an increasingly comfortable lead. This comes about despite a large amount of trimming and getting the maximum from a boat which bears the weight of its years. With each generation, the architects and yards work on optimising the boats as much as they can, but the battle to try to rival the newer boats is a very different one.

Like the racers who are in the habit of saying speed makes you intelligent, when you are in front and you control your adversaries, it is easier to make your choices. Having confidence in the potential of your machine also enables you to endure the offspin of a poorly negotiated option. A change of tack too late, a poor choice of sail and you’ve quickly lost a few nautical miles. You then simply have to get back into the match, remain concentrated, wait for the right time to pounce or a mistake made by your rivals. The sailor that comes out on top isn't always the cleverest one, but often the one that has made the least blunders.

However, we all know that you can seldom be satisfied when you're waiting for something and it's all too easy to be tempted by a risky option. You look for a little way through on the approach towards the doldrums, you try to pull of an option a little closer to the wind in order to shift away from the fleet. For every success, how many disappointments though….? How many of the skippers sailing on the latest generation of boats were born yesterday? They've racked up the miles and accumulated long track records. They know the psychological tactics of war and the daring of the chasing pack, which translates as a waterborne stab in the back.

Ocean racing is a school of humility, which most often lends itself to the rich. So although, in the chasing pack, some attempt to pull off some dangerous coups, they only get what they deserve. What they do most often in the footlights is to put all their heart into sailing cleanly, as they wait to cross the road to notoriety, which will enable them to rival their playmates.

Translation Kate Jennings