Hampshire sailors on the all-female Team SCA Volvo Ocean Race boat are struggling once more to keep the pace on the sixth stage of the race.

Navigator Libby Greenhalgh is on the boat alongside Gosport’s Dee Caffari and fellow Hamble sailor – and skipper of SCA – Sam Davies.

Greenhalgh and the crew have been left frustrated as, once more, they start to fall behind the race leaders.

“Unfortunately today we found a hurdle and we can't get round it, over it or even under it, we just keep running into it which quite frankly is just painful,” she wrote on her latest blog, as the fleet sail from Brazilian port of Itajai to Newport in the USA.

“Our hurdle is back to our boatspeed something we have struggled with throughout this race but been steadily improving.

“For the first seven days we showed we could play with the fleet and even make our own good decisions within some very tight racing.

“Today, though, it is wearing everyone down as we all put our hearts and souls into trying to find 0.5-0.6knots of boat speed.

“How do you just lose boat speed? Technically we haven't.

“We have always struggled for speed at this angle to the wind, previously our biggest weakness was sailing with the A3 downwind but we cracked that on Leg 3, and now we are back to a different piece of the puzzle.

“For Team SCA this is a huge puzzle and each piece plays a critical role at a different time and so far we have successfully overcome them.

“How does this change things now, do we start having to make more radical decisions to stay in the game?

“As navigator I start looking at a wider spectrum of options but maybe not radical.

“Now we are back to sailing on the six hourly updates to monitor our speed and positional strategy in the fleet.

“It is a different game and puts the decision making firmly in our hands with many many more miles to go.”

From the latest location reports, Team SCA are fourth, more than 15 nautical miles behind leaders Dongfeng, who have recovered from a snapped mast in the last leg to power to the front of the pack.

Meanwhile Libby’s brother Rob Greenhalgh on MAPFRE – the Spanish-backed boat – is in second 4.4 nautical miles behind Dongfeng.

Warsash skipper Ian Walker and Southampton navigator Simon Fisher on the Abu Dhabi boat are currently in fifth, 19.7 nautical miles from the lead with 3,300nm left.