Team Telefónica and Groupama sailing team have drafted in extra pairs of hands to help with the frantic preparations for Leg 5.
With less than a week to turn round their boats ahead of the 6,700 nautical mile leg to Itajaí in Brazil via the infamous Cape Horn, both teams have bolstered their shore crews in anticipation of a round-the-clock working schedule.
"We have extra people coming in to cover a lot of the checks and double checks, and to make sure we can do a lot of work in a short amount of time," Groupama's shore crew manager Ben Wright said.
"It becomes expensive and quite intense, and you have your fingers crossed you don't find something, but if you do find something then at least you found it. There's always something, you just want to find it. You have to."
The DHL Shore Crew Award for Leg 4 will be presented to the winning shore team at the Leg 4 prize giving on Thursday March 15.
The winners will certainly have earned the prize.
After four legs of gruelling ocean racing, the majority of which has been spent bashing upwind, the Volvo Open 70s are starting to feel the strain.
But a slightly delayed arrival into the City of Sails plus a busy schedule of practice racing, Pro-Am, and In-Port Race leading up to the Leg 5 start on March 18 leaves little time for vital preparations.
"It will be a full court press," Wright added. "The boat will be stripped out, cleaned off, mast out. It will be all hands on deck, the girls in the office, everybody."
Overall leg leaders Telefónica installed new rigging in Sanya ahead of Leg 4 but after the rigours of sailing more than 5,220 nautical miles to Auckland, a thorough check of the boat is still on the cards.
"I think it's going to be tough for all the teams," their shore team manager Horacio Carabelli said.
"We have already received one jobs list from the boat so we know what the challenge we are going to face is.
"We are bringing in some extra people to help us cope with the work.
"Some of the jobs we can't do but we are going to prepare the boat the best we can for this very tough leg we have in front of us."
