Brit Piers Copham has made dozens of friends and earned a huge respect among La Solitaire community for his tenacity, his seamanship and his ebullient humour. He may have finished outside the time limit last night at the end of Leg 3, but he has sailed a respectable race and is a standard bearer for older amateur solo racers who want to come and have a go like the accomplished mini racer has done. .

​Once he had recovered this morning he said, “When you are fighting over last place over two legs against an Olympic silver medallist you know you are in a different class of race. And for someone who learned to sail in Ullapool in the north west of Scotland on a rowing boat – a fishing boat tender – with an oar and bed sheet and rowed upwind, it is a very special. There are guys in this fleet who have won world championships, and it is the fact that I am here as an aspirant doing it. But it is a bit like the golfer Gary Player used to say, the harder I play the luckier I get, so I do keep going. I am very good at keeping going. My main sport was rowing and in that that is what you have to do, and so I am good at keeping going. Sailing is an amazing combination of being outdoors and being a geek – needing to fine tune things to the Nth degree. You have to have that in you to take pleasure in that.

The thing about this leg was I blew the opportunity to have the best spinnaker run of my life. I blew two spinnakers in quick succession. I have blown four spinnakers in six months.

When the wind goes from 25tks to 36 kts in seconds I was too slow.

I will be back, some time. With the Voie des Anges we are going to go public soon to start a Vendée Globe campaign soon