From a crawl to a sprint The seven mixed-gender IMOCA crews had endured a frustrating opening to the 1,600-nautical mile passage from Genova to Boka Bay, Montenegro. Since leaving the Ligurian coast on Sunday afternoon, they had tiptoed east in ultra-light winds, hugging the shoreline past Nice and St. Tropez. Crews sweated in the late-summer Mediterranean heat, trimming, re-trimming, and searching for the faintest puff of air to keep their foiling machines moving.