Finishing in 9th position in one of the most competitive top tens the IMOCA class has ever seen was the validation our team was looking for after three years of monumentally hard graft.

So, you can perhaps see, the pressure is on, time is short, we have a lot to accomplish in a short amount of time and the whole team, operations and technical could not be working harder.

We have reached the point in our three-and-a-half-year campaign where we can make no more huge leaps forward, our options have been set out and decided, we must now double down and work on perfecting what we have, to ensure we, as a team, have every chance of realising the potential we have worked so hard to create over our first full time campaign.

It is Vendée Globe year and we have just nine short months until I line up with 39 other boats off the coast of Les Sables d’Olonne to take on the world once more.

I have always believed that one of the greatest things about being a human being is our ability to learn, develop and adapt throughout our whole lives.

How far did you meet your objectives for the race?

Pip: I think we did well, the objective was to get here in one piece, to learn about the boat, push quite hard and aspire to top 15 finish.