After 23 days 06 hours 44 minutes and 55 seconds, solo sailor Michel Kleinjans crossed the Charleston finish line of Leg 4 in the Portimão Global Ocean Race on board damaged Open 40 Roaring Forty late on Monday evening at 22:44:55 GMT (16:44:55 local).

For Kleinjans, the final hours of Leg 4 were among the most demanding of the entire 4,800 mile course from Ilhabela, Brazil, to the USA. On Saturday morning, Roaring Forty collided with a container ship approximately 210 miles east of Grand Bahama and although the Belgian solo sailor escaped injury, the boat was mortally stricken with damage to the hull-deck joint around the chainplates in addition to internal structural damage to the ballast tanks and the crucial forward bulkhead. With a cold front and strong winds forecast to block his route to the finish line 420 miles to the north, Kleinjans opted to head east, hoping to avoid the combined force of the northerly flowing Gulf Stream and predicted north-easterly wind gusting to 40 knots plus.

At 0900 GMT on Monday, Roaring Forty was at the same latitude as Charleston and Kleinjans opted to head west through the Gulf Stream to the finish line. “In the morning it was 30-35 knots, then in the afternoon it was 35-40 knots,” reported Kleinjans shortly after crossing the finish line. With remarkable nerve, the offshore sailing specialist maintained solid averages of just below ten knots for the breakneck ride across the Gulf Stream. “The boat was fine,” he added nonchalantly, dismissing the boat breaking conditions as though they were little more than a short, Saturday afternoon club race. Indeed, for the entire 4,800 mile leg, Roaring Forty was problem-free. “Sometimes the pilot would drop out,” recalls the Belgian solo sailor. “But it is just a matter of changing a couple of wires and a bit of soldering and I also tore my big spinnaker a week ago or so, but otherwise everything was OK.”

The turning point in the race was the container ship impact: an incident that deeply concerns this ex-Merchant Marine officer. “The collision was a bit stupid, of course,” he states. “But you really have to be unlucky. It is a really big ocean and there were hardly any ships – I don’t think I saw more than five ships in two weeks.” Since the incident, Josh Hall, the Portimão Race Director, and local offshore solo sailing veteran, Brad van Liew, have been organising manpower, materials and a suitable location for a rapid repair to Roaring Forty and Kleinjans will shift straight from racing to boatyard-mode as soon as he reaches the dock. “Tomorrow, we will have to empty the boat, then take the mast out and move the boat into a shed,” says Kleinjans. With just two weeks until the start of the final leg from Charleston to Portimão on Sunday 31^st May, the activity will be intense.

During the 4,800 mile Leg 4 from Ilhabela, Brazil, to Charleston, Kleinjans yet again showed his ability to match the speeds of the double-handed boats as the fleet sailed north parallel to the coast of Brazil. Crossing the scoring gate off Recife after six days of racing, 12 year-old Roaring Forty was just 69 miles behind the leading double-handed duo of Boris Herrmann and Felix Oehme on Beluga Racer. Four days later, while crossing the Equator, Kleinjans had closed into 40 miles of the Germans, keeping pace with the Class 40s through the Doldrums and only dropped back when the Trade Winds and straight line racing favoured the double-handed teams. After 23 days, Roaring Forty completed the 4,800 miles of Leg 4 just under 48 hours behind victorious Beluga Racer.

There is now one final boat still racing in the Portimão Global Ocean Race and in the 0120 GMT position poll, the remaining boat in the fleet, Team Mowgli with Jeremy Salvesen and David Thomson has 115 miles of racing remaining with the British duo currently averaging 9.2 knots with the possibility of a high-speed reach to the finish line.