Team Amaala in tough spot as Be Water Positive and Allagrande Mapei join pursuit of leaders
UPDATE: Amaala reach the Matosinhos finishing line to collect one point
UPDATE: Team Amaala reached the Matosinhos Fly By finishing line early on Thursday morning local time. The team will hold position for three hours before restarting.
Finish time: 21/08/2025 04:37:00 UTC
Elapsed Time: 3 days 12 hours 37 minutes 0 seconds
Scoring: 1 point
Restart time: 21/08/2025 07:37:00 UTC
Story:
Team Amaala, the Swiss/Saudi-flagged team led by skipper Alan Roura, remain determined despite very light winds slowing their progress towards Matosinhos.
The team has been plagued by extremely light conditions, causing them to fall off the back of the fleet by a significant margin. With an ETA at the Matosinshos Fly-By now deep into the night, the team will finish and hold station for three hours before restarting, the same as the rest of the boats in the fleet, but they will not need to dock in to Matosinshos for the shore-side programme and instead be allowed to stay in the restart area to resume racing after three hours.
"We are making super slow progress towards Matosinhos," said Guillaume Rol from on board Team Amaala."When the leaders were here where we are now they were going super fast with very nice wind. But because our boat is a bit slower, we've missed this wind and it's only getting lighter and lighter. So now we have almost no wind and while the others have been enjoying Porto-Matosinhos, we've been stuck here. Unfortunately it will be like this for a while. It's hard on our spirits, but we will do our best... It's a tough one, but hopefully it gets better from here."
"We love to be in light winds because this way we spend more time together... It's really cool," joked skipper Alan Roura, at least keeping a sense of humour about the situation... For you guys in Portugal, please drink a coffee for me!"
All joking aside, it's a very difficult position to be in. The team should get some relief overnight, but it's a massive deficit to overcome.
Further ahead Allagrande Mapie led Canada Ocean Racing - Be Water Positive out from Matosinshos and in pursuit of Team Malizia.
These teams are in good spirits and making good speed - nearly 20 knots - as they charge south down the Portuguese coast in pursuit of the leading quartet.