It was with a sense of sadness that Hampshire skipper Sam Davies finally led her Team SCA boat to the finish-line of stage five of the Volvo Ocean Race.

More than 48 hours after the rest of the fleet completed the leg from Auckland, New Zealand, to Brazilian port of Itajai, the exhausted all-female crew, including Gosport’s Dee Caffari, Hamble’s Libby Greenhalgh and Davies, arrived at the sixth port on the round-the-world epic yesterday.

"It’s been long leg and I’m really looking forward some rest, I think the whole crew is,” admitted Davies.

“It’s also a little bit of sadness as well, for me this is the best leg of the Volvo Ocean Race so it’s a little bit sad that it’s over,” she added.

It’s been a turbulent stage for SCA after they Chinese gybed early on in the leg.

They then had the thankless task of fixing up their boat and nursing it to the finish, more than 6,000 nautical miles across the notorious Southern Ocean and round Cape Horn at the foot of South America.

"Twenty two very long days at sea,” said Greenhalgh, who is the sister of Rob Greenhalgh, the navigator on the MAPFRE boat that finished second in the latest leg.

“It’s not the longest leg in time but it feels like it, so many things have happened.

“The Southern Ocean, Cape Horn, coming back in almost shorts and t-shirt weather, it’s been a pretty adventurous leg, at least for us.

“I’m looking forward time off.”

Warsash skipper Ian Walker won the leg but despite finishing last, Caffari was in an excitable mood as SCA cruised into port.

"We are within hours of caipirinhas, you can’t help smile, getting the samba feeling and say 'bom dia Brazil',” she said.

The next leg from Itajai to Newport in the USA will start on April 19.