Volvo Ocean Race: Burling's great run bittersweet

When Peter Burling's Team Brunel were the first to sail into Itajai, Brazil to win the seventh leg of the Volvo Ocean Race, the victory was bittersweet.

Overcoming freezing temper-atures and rough conditions in the Southern Ocean to win the leg from Auckland to Brazil, the team earned 16 points in the overall standings which put them back in contention — sitting just 10 points behind leaders DongFeng Race Team.

However, the loss of a fellow sailor brought a dark cloud to their winning run.

Scallywag crew member John Fisher was swept overboard nine days into the leg and was presumed lost at sea a day later.

"To get an email through that one of the other teams has lost someone over the side is obviously probably the worst thing that could ever happen," Burling told the Herald on Sunday. "We backed off for a few days after that, then we needed something to keep our minds focused, so we decided to keep pushing on and try to win the leg. It's probably the best leg we've sailed.

"Our thoughts are with his crewmates and family and friends. Condolences to them."

In the six-to-eight metre swells, the leg was devastating. Scallywag retired after the loss of Fisher, Vestas 11th Hour Racing were forced to retire due to damage, while MAPFRE lost a lot of time after their mast broke and finished in fifth place.

Brunel had their share of damage, too, including busting a tiller off a rudder, tearing their J2 sail early on, and having to deal with a small fire in the media box below deck. "We had our share of small breakages, and breakages that probably should have tripped us up a lot more than they did. But we did a good job of negating them," Burling said.

"The traditional footage you see of the Southern Ocean is going slowly down the massive swells, whereas we were kind of getting the swells but from a couple of different directions.

"It seemed like every day something minor would happen and would just keep you thinking how real it was. It was pretty cool to be able to deal with everything and get the boat to the finish line in one piece."

When the team reached Cape Horn at the bottom of South America — the first spot of land they had seen since leaving New Zealand — they were greeted by a Chilean naval vessel, and took a moment to reflect.

"[We made time] to take a moment there and pay our respects to John and everything that happened, and to have a little celebration in the crew for having made it that far, then to push on after there and head north into some warmer water was definitely a pretty cool part of the race," Burling said.

With a win in the leg, Burling moves within touching distance of sailing's Triple Crown — already having Olympic and America's Cup glory under his belt.

However, he wasn't worried about whether he achieved that or not. For him, it was all about doing his part of the team.

"There's a lot of good teams out there ... for anyone to win the race from here they're going to have to sail the best.

"We're obviously happy to be closer than we were, but 10 points is still a pretty big margin."