This August was spent, between everyone's holidays, mostly getting the boat back in order. As a reminder, we had slightly damaged the foils during an outing in July, mainly due to an issue in the foil case system. The root cause was investigated, a solution was found, and the foil was repaired.

We also took advantage of a quick trip out of the water to change the speedometer. Not such a simple matter on an IMOCA, because although every boat carries one, this instrument usually sits under the hull, whereas on a flying IMOCA it has to go in the keel. Which has given us a few sealing issues so far.

Straight after returning from holiday, Bogi went sailing on Luca Rosetti's Class40 to sail through the season's first front together. For those who don't know, a front is a band of cloud ahead of a low-pressure system, where, put simply, it rains, the wind is strong and the sea gets fairly rough. Even though we're still early in the season and fronts are still fairly mild, let's just say it was a proper wake-up call.

On Monday 24 August, Allagrande Mapei went back in the water, and training has been non-stop since.

As a reminder, since this end of season is aimed at the Route du Rhum, training to sail solo means most sessions are done as "false solo." That means Ambrogio sails as if he were alone, but with someone on board to observe.

In the first days of September, Allagrande Mapei and the team will head to Port-la-Forêt for a group training camp with some of the best IMOCAs on the circuit: MACIF, Charal, MACSF and Quéguiner. The ideal chance to measure ourselves against the fleet ahead of the Défi Azimut, which kicks off on 15 September.

And because there's more to life than offshore racing, we wanted to share something we're really excited about, a project we've been working on for over a year now, with results just in: a scientific project on microplastics at sea, led by Allagrande Mapei itself.

Throughout last year's tour of Europe, The Ocean Race Europe 2025, we used the boat as a scientific sampling tool.

On our team is Bianca, an environmental engineer, who partnered with the Politecnico di Milano and the Università degli Studi di Milano to launch a research project on microplastics. The idea was to collect and analyze water samples all along the route around Europe to measure the presence of microplastics.

The results are now compiled, and they draw a precise map of plastic pollution across thousands of miles sailed. A concrete way of putting the boat to work for research, and a reminder that the sea we race across is also one we need to understand and protect.

We've put a full page online dedicated to the project, with the methodology, scientific partners and the full results.