"It's certainly not the result we were looking for and the reality is that we were left wanting for speed on the reach," he said. "We had made some changes to the boat and, by our numbers, we were actually going better than what we were on the race into Abu Dhabi from Sharjah but clearly still not enough to hang onto the others.
"Now we need to go back to the drawing board and see what else we can do to improve our reaching speed."
The boats will now be placed on a ship and transported under armed guard through a high risk piracy area to a secret safehaven in the Indian Ocean, where racing will resume with a 4000 mile slog to Sanya in China.
"We just have to bide our time for the next stage of the leg," Nicholson said. "The vast majority of (leg three), distance and points wise, lays ahead of us. We now have a lot of homework in regards to the weather and geographical obstacles that we will face in the 4000 odd miles from the safehaven to Sanya.
"I don't think the next stage will be won by boat speed, it will be won by being smart and keeping the boat in one piece and going the right way."
Once the boats are unloaded at the safehaven, racing to Sanya will resume on January 23 and the first boats could reach Sanya by February 4.
