Vestas 11th Hour Racing, skippered by Bristol's Charlie Enright, achieved a third place finish Saturday in the Lisbon, Portugal, to Cape Town, South Africa, leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. The team finished about four hours behind leg winner Mapfre.

“We’re happy with a podium result against a lot of good teams,” Enright said, dockside in Cape Town. “We’re not satisfied yet with how we're sailing the boat, so we still have a lot of work to do, but we’ll keep chipping away. We’re still trying to get faster through the water and streamline our decision-making, but it’s a long race. We have time.”

Vestas 11th Hour Racing, skippered by Bristol's Charlie Enright, achieved a third place finish Saturday in the 7,000 mile Lisbon, Portugal, to Cape Town, South Africa, leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. The team finished about four hours behind leg winner Mapfre.

“We got slingshot out of Lisbon and encountered a lot of downwind fast sailing,” said Enright’s co-founder and Team Director Mark Towill (USA).  “The team came together well. We still have a long way to go but we can’t argue with a podium finish.”

For over half of the 20 days at sea, the team was within sight of at least one of their competitors.

"The close racing of this leg over many miles has offered us a tremendous opportunity to up our game, evaluate our setup, and we have learned some good lessons and made some improvements onboard," said Navigator Simon Fisher (UK).

The last 24 hours were nail-biting with both Vestas 11th Hour Racing and Dongfeng Racing battling it out for second place opting to go into Stealth Mode - the once-per-leg opportunity to have positions withheld from the skeds and tracker for 24 hours.

"The boat has held up well this leg. There were a few sail tears early in the leg and an issue with the toilet a few days ago that wasn't a fun repair, but we got those all set and have been happy with her performance," said Nick Dana of Newport, boat captain.

Enright’s team was always in the mix with the leaders on this leg, but couldn't find a way to slip into the lead as the four top boats in the fleet paraded through strong beam winds with little opportunity to make up ground on one another.

Vestas risked a course that took it further west — almost to South America — on this leg in search of favorable winds and it seemed for awhile that the tactic might pay off. They emerged close to the lead but were never able to close the gap further.

Enright’s team won the Volvo Race’s first leg to Lisbon but now drops to second overall in the seven boat fleet, one point behind the Spanish Mapfre team.

Mapfre now has 14 points overall, Vestas has 13 points, Dongfeng has 11 points and Team Brunel has 6 points. Other boats were still racing early Sunday.