After Tuesday's underwater footage, yesterday we got to enjoy Ambrogio's smile as he passed the Faroe Islands: "I'm about to cry, it's so beautiful!" Clear skies, 10 knots of breeze, flat sea, a vivid green island in the background, and a sun that barely sets anymore.

The race towards the Arctic Circle gave the fleet a brief respite — a precious window that Ambrogio used to rest and take care of some work on board.

"These last 12 hours have been really very good for resting — I made the most of it, tried to sleep a lot and eat, checked the boat thoroughly, moved the autopilot antennas which weren't working properly. I'd had autopilot issues since the start of the race; we'll have to see when there's a lot of water coming over the deck whether it works better than before, but the job is done and that's an important thing. It's never easy to work on board an IMOCA, of course!"

The low pressure system between Norway and Iceland, the main weather feature of these past days, stayed too far east for the fleet to use it to push north towards the Circle. The leaders, Sam Goodchild and Élodie Bonafous, are now sailing in the lighter wind zone west of the system, while Ambrogio, Violette and Francesca chose a more westerly route, passing west of the Faroes and benefiting from a more favourable angle that is allowing them to claw back time on the leaders. We are watching a gradual compression of the fleet, which is already positioning itself ahead of the coming southward descent, as the low continues its slow westward drift.

The particularity of this race — the absence of a mandatory waypoint for crossing the Arctic Circle — generates a near-infinite number of possible routes. A freedom which, paradoxically, risks turning into a kind of anxiety. As good old Kierkegaard would have said: every choice implies a renunciation.

"This endless search to figure out where to cross the Arctic Circle almost risks taking away some of our freedom… in the end, with all this freedom, I spend so much time at the computer trying to understand every possible scenario that I feel like a slave. I tried every model available, and at the end of it, with my head even more confused than before, I went back to what I know how to do: choosing the shortest route and making the boat go fast."

"Allagrande Mapei" is now 100 miles from the Arctic Circle, which she should cross today before beginning the long descent back towards Les Sables-d'Olonne.