Both Team Sanya and Abu Dhabi have arrived in Cape Town ready to being the next phase of their repair cycle ahead of the scheduled race start on 11 December.
The two teams were forced to retire from the first leg and shipped their boats from, respectively, Portugal and Spain. They hope to be back ready to sail on December 6, in time for the in-port race in Cape Town on December 10.
Abu Dhabi's striking black racing yacht Azzam, dismasted on the first night, arrived by container ship at Cape Town's commercial port first thing on Wednesday. Cocooned among containers on the ship, she came in safe and sound and was lifted by crane straight off the ship and into the water.
From there, she motored round to the Abu Dhabi base and the sailors and shore crew set to work unloading a boat that lost her rig on the first leg.
'It's great, even though it isn't quite how we wanted to arrive in Cape Town,' said skipper Ian Walker before joining in with the unloading. 'It's taken a lot of work to get organised and get her here safely.
'There is one more stage to go -- to cure the new rigging. It's another step on the journey. We're really in the hands of Future Fibres. It will take five days to cure the new set of rigging and it should be ready by December 6, to be back in the water by December 7.
'It's really one long chapter. We're taking it quite positively. Things could have been a lot worse as we've seen with what happened to PUMA and the terrible things they have had to deal with.
'Every team is going to have setbacks in this race and it's all about how well you deal with them. So far we've dealt with this one well.'
Team Sanya, who suffered damage to the boat's hull inside the first 24 hours, got their second-generation Volvo Open 70 back in Cape Town at 1300 local, around seven hours after Abu Dhabi.
At 1800 on Wednesday, the boat was lifted off the barge and onto the dock at the team base, much to the delight of the watching crowd.
There will be no let up in the work schedule from there, with the repair team due to start cutting out the damaged area of the boat this evening.
Puma Ocean Racing are still waiting on Tristan da Cunha, with a container ship on the way to meet them and take them back to Cape Town, with an ETA of December 6. Time will be very tight for the US entry, after they were let down by one ship that was booked to bring them back to Cape Town.
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