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The Spanish boat led by Iker Martínez completed the 350 mile course between Alicante-Palma de Mallorca-Alicante

As the first rays of sun burst through into the morning, at 7:45:24 local time (5:45:24 hours) today, the Volvo Ocean Race 2011-2012 qualifying regatta drew to a close for "Telefónica". The Spanish round the world crew headed up by Iker Martínez completed the approximately 350 nautical mile sail between Alicante and Palma de Mallorca and they did so in first place. Behind them, the other five entries in the fleet.

The highlight of this regatta, which the organisation has officially referred to as a qualifier, however with no points awarded, was without doubt the fact that for the first time the six Volvo Ocean Race yachts have sailed alongside each other.

"It's been really interesting to be able to sail up close to the other boats. We have had to carry out lots of sail changes and tacks...," said the Spaniard from Benissa, Pepe Ribes, who summed up the over 40 hour sail. "We close hauled to Palma followed by some breeze coming in from behind and then later on we went through two transitional zones. There were many shifts in position and we got the chance to see a few different sails used by the other teams. We pushed hard and there was a point during the regatta that we felt tired but we recovered when we sailed with only light winds. It's been very interesting and a great test for the start of the first leg in a month."

Passing Ibiza, a key point

Passing the island of Ibiza was decisive in the development of the final stages of the regatta. It was a point at which the crews were forced to take some risks, as Iker Martínez points out:  "The weather forecasts were terrible, with no wind anywhere."

Aboard "Telefónica" the decision was taken to go through the middle. In the end the choice by Martínez's men was the most fruitful. The other boats that chose the alternative routing saw the wind playing games with them. "As we saw the entries in front were stationary, we decided to go through the middle, where there was a bit more pressure. We got more luck than anything else. We managed to get through well and to close haul back with a fair bit of breeze," explained the Skipper, once back on dry land.

The conclusions drawn from this regatta, a qualifier with no scoring, might be extracted from comments by the "Telefónica" skipper: "When the boats are together they perform very, very equally and that will make this regatta very, in fact, extremely tough." That's a good point to keep in mind with the start of the round the world race drawing near.

Inspiring calm

However, the Team Telefónica crew are nonetheless are exuding an air of calm.

"You have to take this fairly lightly and not come to any conclusions because you never really know how the rest of this is going to go, but overall we did well. All of the crews are good and they know what they are doing, so although we got good feedback, we'll have to watch out," said Basque sailor Xabi Fernández.

Pepe Ribes echoed similar sentiments to his fellow crew-member twice over in the Volvo Ocean Race: "It's difficult to say how we did against the other entries as conditions were shifty and it's hard to draw any solid conclusions, but at least we are all in the same situation."

Key week for measuring

With no time to lose, "Telefónica" left her spot at the quayside to head for the area where the team bases are situated in the Port of Alicante.

Once there, the Team Telefónica shore crew began to unload the boat to prepare her for a very important week: the official measurements, that as Xabi Fernández pointed out, is like "another regatta". "This week we'll be focussed on the official measuring which we must pass now we've done another race. Everything's as it should be and we carried out various pre-measurements with the class measurers."

These five days will be the only time that "Telefónica" is off the water before the regatta start.