Mini Transat qualification: Strong Mini Fastnet for Lisa Berger and Axel Solbach

Austrian Lisa Berger and German Axel Solbach presented themselves as a dream team at the Mini Fastnet. Since their qualification solos in the Mediterranean, they have sailed their boats together, spent a lot of time together privately and now, in a race that was not really suited to the strengths of Lisa's maxi 6.50 "Mojo" due to its high proportion of light and upwind wind, they made a big impression with sixth place.

The finish in particular was a brilliant performance. Yesterday, the two Minists, who want to sail the Mini-Transat in 2023, were still hovering around 30th place - in midfield. Several doldrums had to be passed south of the island of Ouessant, with shifting winds, if you can even call it wind at three to five knots. After five days at sea, exhausted, exhausted, exhausted, you can break down in a situation like this.

However, the Berger/Solbach duo brought all their experience, nerves of steel and willpower to bear and made up metre after metre on the leaders. When we reach Axel at seven o'clock this morning, who has only just got his mobile phone back from the race committee (in the Mini class, all means of communication apart from the VHF marine radio have to be handed in before the start), the battery still has one per cent charge. But it's enough for a first call.

While a thousand voices chatter away in the background, the man from Munich calmly analyses and reflects on the last few days. "Lisa almost always steered by hand through the night," he says. "The final sprint was a blast. Lisa can also sail without wind. You're travelling at five or six knots and the others are literally standing around you." Axel surmises that the French, who train on the west coast, "obviously don't cope as well with little wind as we do".

The Austrian-German duo's tactic was "speed". Because with the limited weather information, it was not possible to focus on wind shifts and transitions. This paid off, especially south of the Scillys. The "Mojo" skippers took a turn to the west, which brought them back within striking distance of the field in a tricky situation.

Whilst they will probably spend a few more hours exchanging experiences and celebrating with the other sailors, they will then go to the hotel, take a shower and go to bed. The crane appointment is not until Monday. Until then, there will be more than enough time for some regeneration and plenty of partying.

In the Protos, it was once again Laure Galley from the German-Japanese racing team DMG Mori Global One who dominated her classification. She was usually in first position, practically never worse than top 5 and looked like the winner right up to the doldrums finish, having already won her inaugural race a few weeks ago.

But in the end, several of her rivals slipped through. The likeable Frenchwoman only came sixth, but once again got the better of her team rival Federico Sampei. We can already tell that we will be seeing and hearing a lot more from her.

Editor's note: In an initial version of the article, we had Berger/Solbach in 7th place, as shown by the tracker. However, the ranking has been corrected.