Malizia 4 has had no shortage of drama in the North Atlantic, and Day 5 pushed the crew to their limit. With the fleet now past 1,500 nautical miles into the race, a rudder sensor bracket failure knocked out the autopilot mid-squall, forcing the team to hand-steer through 40-knot gusts while simultaneously reefing the main and scrambling below deck to restore the system. It’s the kind of moment that separates offshore sailors from everyone else, and it happened while the boat was still nursing an earlier issue with its port foil.
Malizia 4 Under Pressure, On and Off the Water
What makes this latest footage worth watching is not just the mechanical failure itself, but the composure required to manage it. Onboard cameraman Gauthier captured the chaos from inside the cockpit and down below, giving viewers a rare, visceral sense of what a system failure actually looks like at sea — not a quiet diagnostic checklist, but four or five overlapping jobs happening at once in a boat that refuses to slow down. You can watch the full Day 5 update from Malizia 4 to see exactly how the crew worked through it in real time.
A Reshuffling Atlantic Ahead
Beyond the technical drama, the tactical picture is shifting. A high-pressure bubble sitting ahead of the fleet threatens to compress the gaps built up over the first days of racing, potentially bunching boats back together and resetting the standings. That kind of leveling effect has already shaped this edition’s storyline, echoing the tactical splits covered in our look at how the fleet split on a key tack earlier in the race. For Malizia 4, surviving the mechanical setbacks may matter less than how quickly the crew can capitalize on the next windshift once the pressure zone arrives. With the North Atlantic still delivering big seas and unpredictable squalls, nothing about this race is settled, and Malizia 4’s ability to keep pace despite the damage will say a lot about the days still to come.
Video courtesy of Team Malizia – Boris Herrmann — watch the full video on YouTube.
