Leg 8

Libby and Witty at the nav station. Peter watches. Sched. People smiling. Everyone is looking forward to the leg being over, it looks like. Ben: Expecting the pressure to build. 30 plus knots. We'll be reaching into Newport in the early hours of the 8th. Slomo washing machine with crew smiling at the back of the boat. Sunrise with crepuscular ray.Parko sees Bermuda: "Land ho!" We see Bermuda as they pass to weather of it. Libby uses a sextant: "Plan B." Stacking below. Libby: Yeah; FR0's the next sail. Gybing. Ben: Lost 20 miles to a couple of boats because they gybed earlier. Still gotta stay positive. We all have the same reason to do the race. It's an awesome team to be a part of. Just like going yachting with your mates, really.Flopping in foggy conditions. Another boat's red light (maybe?) in the fog. Instruments: going 3.3 knots. Slatting mainsail in the night. Pascal at the nav station. Moon in the fog. A flashing red light on a buoy. MAPFRE, illuminated by a powerboat spotlight. Morning: Kevin explains that arriving at the TSS they were first. And now we are fourth. Fourth. Behind Vestas. (He sounds devastated.) But nothing is done. Nothing is done. Carolijn: It does happen a lot, actually. The classic one... in Lisbon, similar situation, where the boats in front stop, and the boats behind come in with the breeze and just drift past you. Finishes like this, in a drifter, are always a little bit hard. But it happens in yacht racing, and you have to deal with it. Instruments: 0.3 knots. Flopping in the fog. A slack-hosited J1 flops. Carolijn: Which way is the finish? Over there? Here we go. Charles scowls. Pascal looks at his tablet. Crew sits motionless on the bow.Pascal and Charles at the nav station. Looking at the chart, the other boats' positions. Charles explains they are passing the TSS; then 18 miles to go. Big fight for the next 4 hours. Can be a big mess. It's in the night and foggy. (He sounds really tired.) Pascal looking at the computer. Pascal: The difference after the strong wind we tried to sail with (something) in a very light condition. The goal was to sail north to catch the new wind. We were faster all the time compared to the fleet. That's why we arrived to be first now. And the only thing we can say is that the wind condition through the finish is very light. Around 5, 4, maybe 3, 2 knots. Going to try to do the best we can as to the finish line and finger crossed. Pascal gets more clothes on. Charles goes on deck. Instruments at night.Xabi and Joan talk at nav station. Neti, on deck, reads out latest sched. "MAPFRE (us): third." Rob, on the helm as they sail in fog in light winds: Last sched sounds pretty good. Talks about the strategy getting through the front and timing their tack right. We were hoping just to get to fourth. Now we're up to third and Dongfeng isn't that far away. Got 200 miles to go. Gotta keep fighting. Blair, forward, clears a halyard. Crew working in the cockpit. Slomo grinding. Sail change. Pablo on the helm. Rob, gesturing to port: "Brunel's down here 17 miles." Pablo, below: The last sched was better than we hoped. He talks about the boats ahead. Will be very tricky at the arrival in Newport, light wind and current. Anything can happen. So go MAPFRE... The weather forecast opened a gate for us. It was a tough night, but we sailed very good, so we softened up some miles to the leaders, and then the compression was very good to us. Neti, on deck, talks in Spanish about thier change of fortune. "Vamos MAPFRE. Vamos MAPFRE." Crash cam footage from the night before of them broaching. Spreader cam view of the cockpit. Sail change on the foredeck: Hanking on the J1. Hoisting the J1 inside the J0.Peter talks about his socks. Sched on the computer screen. Kyle talks about how Dongfeng is coming dwon on them in the sched. Nina: Hope we can hold them off. Very stressful. We can see them now on the horizon. Capey (in the background): I wouldn't sail above the mark. He calls out to Peteron the helm: He's giving up a lot of high for not a great deal of gain so far. Shot of Dongfeng on their weather rail several miles away. Carlo talks about how coming in last to Auckland was the worst. "It's definitely not happening this time." Peter, on the helm, talks about peeling to the J0.Grinding under overcast sky. Horace: On the lock! J1 tack! Charles, below: Red boat very close to us (MAPFRE). We manage to be together again; it's completely crazy. This choice of the TSS is really complicated. It's really stressful because we're all really close; we can win first place or lose everything. It's tricky. Pascal puts on his boots; talks in French. Crew on the bow taking a sail down. Sailing upwind.Instruments on the mast. Light winds and flopping. Rain. TJ: Last night? Yeah, it wasn't much fun. Started off fun, then as we got closer to the front got gnarlier and more hectic... No sleep. But that's part of the Volvo Ocean Race. Then no wind, rain, bobbed around in the rain. And now we're making our way to Newport. Stacking forward. Crew sitting on the bow looking tired. Cockpit. Stacey on the bow preparing to hoist the J1. Hoisting, with Charlie and Tony on the forward pedestal.Drone circling Dongfeng in light wind and fog with the MH0. Daryl talks about being pushed off the wheel by a wave. Ended up being fully blown off the wheel. No one driving the boat doing 30 knots, which is fun. Managed to avoid a wipeout. Night shots of light winds. Crew working in the dark with red lights. Jack, talking about the big night: It was ridiculous. Lot of water over the deck. Everyone's pretty wrecked this morning. I don't think anyone slept. Bit weird to be sitting her at 4 knots. Pascal and Daryl look at the computer. Pascal talks about Turn the Tide (presumably about them going around the west side of the exclusion zone). J1 flopping in light wind. Charles looking tired. Everyone looking tired. Marie below, eating. Stu, below, eating: Last night would have to be the wettest sailing I've ever done. Pitch black, no moon, no stars, no reference. In the last sched we were doing 1 knot, and Vestas was doing 20 knots more than us. Jack: We were basically the first to get to the light winds. Should have a better angle to Newport, but who knows? Charles on deck. Everyone looking a bit out of kilter. Carolijn: Seems to be a little pressure here. Charles squints at the foggy horizon.Night shots from the stern of spray. Nicolai: "Pedestal. Who's on the pedestal?" Brad, in the morning, talks about the difficult night and trying to battle through it. A bird (barn swallow?) perched on his shoe. Nicho, on the helm, calls for the A3 to be forward. They flop in light winds. Jules talks about a cloud. They decide to tack back. Jules, at the nav station: "Release ourselves from the grip of this. Caught the northern wall of the Gulf Stream, 4 or 5 knots. And unfortunately the wind cut off before we could get out of it. Rain. Martine tries to rescue the birds (more than one, apparently). She was going to put them in the box so they could rest, and release them after. She grabs a bird and puts it in the box. Disney princess Martine.Drone shots of them triple-heading, surfing fast on port gybe. Washing machine shots from the drone. Dubbed audio to try to match the wave sounds.Black and white footage at night. Heavy winds. Washing machine.Xabi, in the cockpit talks in Spanish. Wind is about 12 knots. Talks about Turn the Tide and AkzoNobel, the approach to Newport. Repeats in Spanish: The last 24 hours we knew would be very tricky. Last night had winds up to 35 knots downwind. Now we've passed the front and we're going upwind with 7 or 8 knots. Going to be a compression. Managed to pass Turn the Tide, and made some distance as well with AkzoNobel. Are now 8 miles from Vestas. Still some hope. A lot can happen. Crew stacks to leeward in anticipation of a tack. Working the jury-rigged keel turing the tack. Joan, Xabi, and Neti clustered over the nav station, talking in Spanish. Washing machine from the cabin looking aft. Rob on the helm; Xabi on the pedestal. As it gets dark, wind is lighter, Rob looks to starboard through binoculars. Willy forward for a sail change. Looks like going from MH0 to J0 or vice versa.Rain dripping off the boom. Frederico yawning. Martin trimming. Dee: Just came out of 35 knots into the trough of no wind. Quite remarkable. Got the position report at the same time; unfortunately we didn't do too well. MAPFRE and Vestas are going better than us. Wind is starting to fill, but bizarrely from the wrong direction... Final 200 miles; never worked so hard.Kevin, below: Light spot. Brunel very close, Vestas very close. Nightmare to Newport. Last 200 miles will be very stressful. Now it's light sailing, weight forward, fingers crossed that we will be luckier than they are, and first to grab the wind to Newport.Drone shots of Scallywag triple heading. Antonio on the helm in the sunrise. Parko tidying lines. Wake. Peter: About 75 miles south of Bermuda. A few more hours on this gybe. Last few days have been pretty hard. Now we've got the same shift as everyone else. You gotta keep believing you can get into that leading pack. Have to keep sailing as if we're leading, sailing 100%. Witty: 48 hours ago were 235 miles behind. Now 130 miles behind. As we say on Scallywag, never surrender, never give up. Alex: What time is it? Talks witih Ben about how they've been on starboard for 8 days.Kyle, below: Today was the most action we've seen in a while. Gybed, with Dongfeng behind them. Crew shifting stack. Capey stacking below. Drone shot of the gybe, then above the cockpit showing the crew working with Sam on the stern. Kyle: Big front coming, 35 knots overnight. Probably a lot of action. Bouwe on the helm as cre stacks. Kyle: Looking forward to Newport. Have a burger and a beer. And get a shower. Hasn't been too long a leg, but it will be nice to get to shore. High drone shot, then above the weather rail as they're stacking, and then the drone pulls back to show them pull away.Slomo of water on deck, Charles on helm. Gybing to port in the high. Carolijn near the bow. Carolijn, on the stern, asks Pascal what's going to happen tonight. Pascal answers that there will be wind, and speed. He discusses how it will get 10 or 15 degrees colder in a few hours. Slomo washing machine. Cool sound editing. Charles: We are more afraid of what's going to happen when the wind drops. It's a tricky situation. We are in a good position, but we know the back of the fleet will come back. So it's stressful. MAPFRE is very close, and Brunel is doing a fantastic comeback. Lots of washing machine shots in the pit. Daryl, below: 33 knots, so it was good that we did the peel; was 28 when it started. Jack: Just starting to get dark, so it's going to be quite entertaining.Sam, to Kyle, below: What's it like on deck right now? Kyle: Wet. Nav screen shows strong winds they're sailing in. Kyle gets geared up. Sam shoots from the cabin as crew works in the washing machine in the cockpit. It looks wild. And loud! The sound editing really works here. Shot of the instruments, with the boat going 28 knots. (Update: I learned from Matt Knighton in The Boatfeed that this is using an infrared light source to backlight the crew. Very cool.)We see the gybe to port. Tony driving. Washing machine. Wake. Sail change. Stacking. Grinding. Bagging a sail in the spray on the foredeck. More washing machine.Sunrise. Drone shot of Akzo sailing by. Nicho on the helm talking to Nicolai. Justin: Before the sun got up was very light. Wind direction about 145. Waiting for about 165 before we can gybe. Instruments. Justin: On the last sched lost about 10 miles to the other boats. Better pressure before us, and that's just the way it is. Luke, below: We are gybing toward Newport, so moving the stack quickly over. easier to throw things downhill. Nicho on the helm talks about the gybe. Stacking on deck. We see the gybe. Simeon: Heading in the right direction. Busy upcoming 30 hours. Been a difficult leg so far, so hopefully we can have a little luck our way and have a better result. At least we've got a lucky Irish OBR.Sunrise. Liz hands over the wheel to Frederico. At 13 knots she had just under 10 on the keel; at 15 she brings it up again. She debriefs with him about height-vs-speed tradeoff. Dee at the nav station. "Just got the position report. Probably only about 36-40 hours of sailing left." Closed with Vestas, but everyone else is sailing faster than them. MAPFRE have just moved into view on the horizon, only 6 miles away. "Bloody red boat again... Race for third is full on, between ourselves, Vestas, and MAPFRE." She says she's gutted, but she has to be positive when she goes on deck. Martin steering, Dee comes up. MAPFRE is 8 miles away. Points out Brunel and Vestas ahead. Henry talks with her about the strategic situation. Annalise: Been able to see them both for an hour now. Had our suspicions that it was MAPFRE... A full-on last day into the finish. Hopefully we can finish strongly and be happy when we get into Newport. Drone show from low alongside the bow. Dee: The fight for third place... could be the difference is a rain cloud. Big depression with 35 knots of wind coming through... Boats could change places at the finish line with a puff of breeze. I'm kind of nervous and excited at the same time. Drone shot of them unfurling the J3 to triple-head.TJ looks for Bermuda. 60 miles away, but it's low, so won't be able to see it. He talks about the upcoming gybe. Then big wind, Gulf Stream, then finish with burgers and lobster rolls. Charlie, Nick talk about where they're going to eat when they get in. Charlie: If everything goes according to plan maybe I'll have the team over to my house to barbecue on my new grill. Nick and Charlie talk about the difference between Bristol and Newport. Charlie talks about Bristol's maritime tradition. Herreshoff museum. Boatbuilding. Nick talks about how he bought a house while he was at sea on the race. Looking forward to spending time there. And catching up with friends and family. Charlie: A home stopover is both a blessing and a curse. Have to try to see people, carve out time for family. Best opportunity for rest might be the transatlantic. Charlie: My wife [will be at the dock]. His folks, maybe, depending on the hour. Nick and Charlie talk about the arrival last time in Newport. Welcome was over the top. Shooing boats out of the way to do light-wind gybes. Took about 2 hours to cover the last few miles. Hopefully we'll have pressure all the way in, and a good position. Nick: This team's pretty hungry at this point. Have been on this board for about 5 days now; a lot of sleep. Everyone's pretty fired up. Stacking. Tony drills something on the mainsail tack. He explains that they had a rip in the tack webbing, so he's sewing that back on. With the front coming, want to be sure it's good.Rob, below, talks about how they've been holding off AkzoNobel for the last day. They're to weather of them. Won't really know for 24 hours until they gybe. The scheds have been bouncing around a lot. 5, 10 miles gained and lost. They've generally done well on the guys ahead. 1000 miles to go and we're sitting in 5th or 6th, but 4th's not that far away. Third's not likely I guess. Front coming in might help. A point's a point. Anything we can salvage will be good. Blair on deck: Beautiful tradewind sailing the last few days, but we've been doing it from 5th or 6th position, trying to catch the guys in front. Keep working. A couple of opportunities ahead. Crossed the outbound track to Capetown. Gonna keep fighting, gonna win this thing. Tamara grinding. Surfing. Blair grinding in slomo. Tamara, on the aft pedestal, turns away from the spray. Xabi uses a hand-bearing compass to look at a competitor to weather. "82/84 I would say... 7 miles."Charlie steering. Washing machine. Sunrise. Mark and Nick talk about breakfast food. Martin asks questions about Newport. "Which state is it in?" Nickname of the state? "The Ocean State." Jena didn't know that. Tony: "You're asking the wrong person." The name of the bay in Rhode Island. (Narragansett.) How many times did Newport host the America's Cup? Tony: "Must have been a lot." Phil: "I'm gonna say, three." Haha; Aussie's clearly weren't raised to know that one the way U.S. sailors were. Jena: That's a good question. Tony: I don't know. They had it for 100 years, did they? SiFi: 1851 to 1983. Stacey: I know who they lost it to. Australia. :-) Charlie comes up to give the latest sched. Wasn't horrible. Charlie on the best place in Newport to get breakfast. Bell's Cafe seems to be a popular choice. Nick: Black Perl for sunset cocktail. Charlie: New York Yacht Club. Nick: Inside Irish pub would be Fastnet... (some others). Other restaurant recommendations. (Sorry; I can't care.) Jena grinding. Foredeck.Beautiful sunset drone shots of Dongfeng triple-heading. Includes slomo adn sped-up.Sam asks Peter: Can you tell me anything you've lost or gained in the Bermuda Triangle? Peter: No, haven't really lost or gained much. Had a pretty good yacht race. Carlo: Won the America's Cup with Team New Zealand in Bermuda. But I can't really talk about it because it upsets Kyle. Carlo asks Kyle below: What did you lose? Kyle: Wow. That's a low blow. Gonna have to cry myself to sleep again.Drone shot labeled "Somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle". Bouwe, Peter, Abby talk about the Bermuda Triangle. Carlo mentions seeing another boat behind them. Capey makes a flying saucer with a dish. Carlo asks Bouwe to explain the Flying Dutchman story. Abby talks about it more. What is so special or different about this place. "Fingers crossed we make it through and out the other side." Drone shot with eerie music. Capey: Guys! What's gone wrong with the GPS, we've lost all the coms. Oh, shit the compass has gone too. Capey disappears. Then, in the drone shot, Brunel disappears.Low-alttiude drone shot. Nicolai: It's all about the last 24 hours. We're coming in fresh. Just go around them. Drone shot from above. Emiily: Passing by Bermuda. Which I think everyone knows by now is where I'm from, because I've been talking about it all week. I haven't been home for a year. So it's pretty cool for me to pass by. Give a wave. Simeon: During the watch we'll come into lighter pressure in the high. Once we sort of 90 degrees with the high pressure we've gotta gybe off. It will be tomorrow before we do that gybe. Drone shot.Beautiful sunrise drone shot with TTToP below. Drone shots from close to weather as they triple-head in surfing conditions. Francesca drives. Liz at the nav station, talks about still need more speed. Talks about everyone sleeping below. She waves at the crew in the cockpit. Nicolas, at the nav station, talks about the need for more speed. Not sure what it could be. Hopefully they'll stay consistent with the other teams through the finish. Lucas puts in earbuds in his bunk. Liz films herself interviewing Dee. Talks about the belowdecks stack, consistency. Drone shot. Martin, below: Worked on the boat, and got on the same pace as the rest of the group. Hard to say if it's that they're slow, or just unlucky with clouds. Nice to be back on the pace again. Nicolas: Have a high pressure to run. If we're too far east it's good for the shift but bad for the windspeed. If they are too far west it's good for the windspeed but bad for the distance. Have to find the best compromise. Drone shot of the masthead with sunrise behind it.Slomo with compeititor two miles ahead of them. Jack on the wheel: Always nice to be the hunter. Charles in bunk reading. Talks in French about what he's reading. Jeremie asks him something in French; Charles answers "no". Slomo of Carolijn on the helm. Carolijn: A couple of nights ago had a bad night. Probably caught some of it. Took us about 12 hours to decide to do a backdown. Charles even went in the water, and had a look. And after that the boat took off. Guess we had to clear our minds; had 24 difficult hours. And here we are now. We didn't see them for 5 or 6 days, and now I can read the "Brunel" on their sail... Game's on again. Slomo of the bow with spray and Brunel ahead of them. Daryl grinding. Daryl: Less than 1000 miles to Newport. Going to be a pretty interesting and busy few days. A gybe coming up in the high pressure system; battling it out with Brunel. Slomo wave, stern wake.Drone shot from close astern as Brunel surfs fast. At nav station, Peter talks about how they got screwed by a couple of clouds. Shows sattelite image. "Probably should keep compressing the whole way into the high." Pretty shify and tricky. He shows the routing and zooms in. "Doesn't look like it's going to get much easier; looks like a pretty good park up at the end. Hopefully have a few miles up our sleeves at that point." Drone shot low ahead as they surf. Capey bailing below in a Movistar shirt. Sam asks him the trick. He explains it's just like helming; you have to work with the waves. But it doesn't make as much difference. Sam: What do you have to say about Kyle Langford. Capey: He's the man. Used to the boy. Sam: How was he when he first came to you. Capey: Young champion. Young and dumb. Capey moves gingerly aft to the nav station. Bouwe: Last couple of scheds were not so good. That's what we expected sailing towards the high. Doing relatively well against Vestas and Dongfeng. (sound issues) Capey, at the nav station: We've gained a little bit back. Kyle, at nav station in the dark: Just got the sched, gained a little against Dongfeng. Surfing shot on deck. Abby: Currently got 20 knots of breeze, and we're sending it. Over there (gestures to port) is a big sucker cloud. We're hoping that Dongfeng is in that cloud doing 2 knots rather than 20 knots. We see a broach to clear weed. Drone following them into the sunset. Flies in and Kyle catches it, grins at the camera.Grinding. Slomo washing spray with Witty on the helm. Libby below: 3 or 4 days to the finish. But a lot's going to happen. Heading toward the high pressure. Going to have to gybe. Leaders will go into lighter breeze, so we'll gain. As much of a realist I am, I think it's going to be hard to overtake anyone, but we'll get back in touch with the fleet. You can never say never. Antonio bailing. Spray on deck. Bagging garbage. Washing machine shot of the hatch from inside.Mast cam, spreader cam: sailing fast with lots of spray. Washing machine. Slomo washing machine. Slomo of Ben grinding. Ben, below: Certainly wet out there. 20-25 knots of wind. Doing 20-25 knots of wind. 20-25 degrees of water temperature. Great sailing. Ben towels his head off in the hatchway. Trystan: Gained 20, 25 miles on the front of the fleet. Libby reads the sched: We are a small 171 miles behind. Trystan: Hopefully at the end we'll have a shot of beating someone. In theory we'll be finishing 2 and a half hours behind the leader. So there's still all to play for.Xabi, below, talks in Spanish. 1,300 miles more or less to Newport. Talks about the other boats, TTToP, Vestas. The complicated situation. He repeats in English: Had some compression from behind, AkzoNobel gained from behind. About 3 and a half days left. The boats in front have an important lead. Going to be very hard to catch them. But have to keep hope, keep the options open. Right now we think Turn the Tide and Vestas are achievable. (Heh. I'm writing this up after I know the actual result.) Xabi hopes the high pressure is moving to the east so they can cut the corner a little bit. Crew in the cockpit, slomo washing machine with sunset behind it. Rob on the helm. Willy grinding. Neti trimming. Crash cam as Joan reads the latest sched. As he reads about them gaining on the competition the crew on deck shouts "¡Vamos!" and pounds the deck.Sail change, with Parko in the pit. Slomo shot of Parko's face. Spray. Parko on the helm. Parko getting doused. Parko: Challenge is being out there by yourself. Scheds are hard. Like all endurance sports, it's easy to pack it in. But the highly competitive group here, we won't give up. Couple of thousand miles left. Gotta put ourselves in position to take them whe they arise.Blast reaching with a reefed main. Washing machine shots from the stern. Peter, trimming the main on the stern, talks about it. We do that for 4 hour lots in the day, and at night - here we go, here is a crack (as a wave washes over) - we only do 3 hours at night. Witty, at the nav station, reads a sched over the PA: We are consistent. We lost 12 miles to everybody... Keep up the good work. Peter scowling in his bunk. Libby explains that they were faster, but weren't in the lifted pressure. Starting with the next sched should start gaining on the fleet.360 VR view of MAPFRE surfing on starboard. Rob on the helm, Xabi trimming. 360 shot from the bow. Someone runs forward to adjust the angle of the camera mounted on the bow pulpit.Cockpit, Slomo washing machine. Below, Charlie and Mark talk about how they went to Brown U., but they only slightly overlapped (Charlie was older). We lived in the same house, but not at the same time. Mark: We were both far too big to be sailing small boats. Charlie talks about doing poorly at nationals. Mark talks about going to the unveiling of a new sailing center. Mark talks about pollution in the Providence River. "I would never eat shellfish from the Providence River... That's all the questions." SiFi on the helm. SiFi below: In our third day of sailing through the tradewinds. And then all the action in this leg is going to happen at the end. Going to get lifted and have to pick our moment to gybe out of the high pressure. Main competition is further west. They have better pressure, but we might get the shift first. Can hopefully come out ahead of Dongfeng and maybe Brunel. He shows the computer screen with the competitors on it, and follows the routing north to where they're going to need to gybe near Bermuda. Slomo shot of the weather rudder, the stern with the US flag and horizon.Fast-moving drone shots of Dongfeng surving on starboard.Slomo washing machine. Crew grimacing. Kevin: We are the boat that is the most west of the fleet. We chose to keep this gauge in order to have more wind in the next 48 hours. It's not an easy position. Since you're going first into the high pressure you have less wind than the boats behind. We'll see in the next 48 hours if this was a good choice or not. Slomo spray, serious crew faces. Marie's water bottle.Close up of Henry's foulies. He gets his boots on. Henry: Sailing is a complex sport. Talks about wind, weather, technique. Every single day is different. He sits at the nav station with Dee. Dee: Attention to detail. He loves data. Very performance-driven. Henry writes in a notebook. He talks about the level of intensity, how close the racing is. On deck, he talks about the drag race. Vestas 24 miles to windward. He thinks once the shift comes it will be pretty close. Below, Henry: Keep pushing, on day 7, day 11, day 12. It can come down to just a few minutes at the end. He dries off below.Pretty drone shots of AkzoNobel surfing on starboard through blue water and occasional sargasso weed.Bouwe talks about seaweed in the sargasso sea. Slomo shot of sargasso. Drone shot from high overhead of sargasso. Sam: Why so unhappy Kyle? Kyle, on the helm: A lot of weed. Peter: It's a bit of a pain, really. It gets stuck all over the deck, all over the lifelines. Shots of weed in the lifelines. Bouwe brushes his teeth below; Abby picks off weed at the base of the mast. More weed washes onto the boat in slo motion. Abby: It's not making us go fast. Might be good for the environment, but it's definitely not making us go fast. Bouwe, below, talks about how to clear it off. Peter, below, explains that they've got enough wind to "broach it off." Kyle demonstrates. Drone shot of them doing big S-curves to clear weed. Bouwe: We seem to be doing it all right. We see the polar percentages go down, we do our little trick, and the polar percentages go up again. Drone shots. Slomo washing machine. Abby grinding. Peter trimming. "Hold there." Peter, at the shrouds. "I think the 2 might be a little bit loose... Yeah."Awesome slomo drone footage of Vestas surfing. Charlie on the helm. Drone shots. Charlie, below: Really excited to get to Newport, and Bristol, R.I., where I'm from. They earned and deserve this stopover. Hopefully can improve our position a bit... I learned to sail growing up on Narragansett Bay. It's a place that's gotten a lot cleaner over the years. When I was a young whippersnapper wasn't a great place to go swimming or eat shellfish from. But they've made progress in recent years. He talks about the Ocean Summit that he'll be speaking at. When people come together actions can be taken that improve our waterways. Another reason he's really excited to get home is to see his family. It will have been over a month. He has two little kids, one 2 1/2 and the other 1. He'll be walking... Talks about the family's support. Drone shots of them surfing fast triple-heading. Tony on the helm. Mark grinding. He explains that they got important news from Hawaii, that the local legislature banned sunscreen that's harmful to coral reefs. Drone shot. S-curve to clear weed from the leeward rudder. Drone shots.Drone shots of MAPFRE triple-heading on starboard in 20 knots of wind. Crew in the cockpit.Drone shots. TTToP triple-heading on starboard in 18 knots. Weed floating into the cockpit. Nicolas and Dee at the nav station. Dee talks about the legs to and from Hong Kong, and then in the Southern Ocean: for three legs they had the potential to podium, and it hasn't happened. Everyone's nipping at our heels. In the back of my mind: We can't lose it again. High drone shot of them sailing through lines of sargasso weed. Slomo of Francesca wringing out her hair. She talks about trying (again) for a podium position. Slomo of Frederico taking off his foulies. "We deserve it if we get it... The best teams get the results they want because they work hard." Francesca talks about the opportunities in the last thousand miles. "We just need a little bit more lucky." Slomo of Liz on the helm. Liz: At the moment we're in a podium spot, and we're fighting like hell to keep that spot. Dee: 2,000 miles to go... the pressure's on. High drone shot.Drone shot tracking behind them as they sail fast. Wake. Rudders. Slomo washing machine in the cockpit. Spreader cam. Stacking.Charles at nav station: For 24 hours we are the slowest boat. Wanted to check, so I jumped into the water. Maybe we had something; it's difficult to know. Maybe something came off as we backed up, before I jumped in. We'll see in the next sched. We then see Charles prepping for going over. He went over in the dark. Shouting in French. They pull him back aboard on the stern. He goes below, puffing and dripping.Libby continues explaining how she conveys sched info. There are people who want to know, so you can't not tell them. And it kind of breaks the day up. It's kind of the "news of the day". Peter: Happy birthday, we're the fastest boat in the fleet now. Computer screen. Libby and Bessie at the nav station.Epic drone shots of Dongfeng sailing fast on starboard, including slomo with bird.Libby at the nav station, reads the sched over the PA. Something about asking them to do fewer "wind checks"? Computer screen. Weather software. Libby explains the every-six-hours sched. Managing expectations, and how you share the information. I'm looking at the routings, so I always know what's coming. But the rest of the crew doesn't know that, and so if they take a loss they wonder have we been sailing badly?Peter jokes that the leg is for his 39th birthday. Bessie figures out that yesterday was his birthday. He laughs. Bessie on the pedestal. Sailing fast. Washing machine. Parko on the helm. Weed on the lifelines. Bessie getting her gear on (or off?) below. Outrigger. Libby, at the nav station, wishes Pete a happy birthday. About 7 days from the finish. About 210 miles behind the fleet, which is quite a lot. To be honest I think it's going to be hard to get another boat. It doesn't stop you pushing and trying to find those miles.Sailing fast. Slomo weed going past the keel. Parko on the helm. Various angles of sailing fast. Alex, eating below: Yeah, not a lot of change going on. Windspeed's the same, wind angle's the same. This is what the Volvo's all about. Blast reaching for 4 or 5 days. They've been losing miles in the scheds for the last several days because they haven't had the wind. It's frustrating, for sure. We planted a seed a little earlier in the leg, and it didn't pay off... That's ocean racing sometimes.Xabi, below, talks in Spanish about the fleet and their position, the approach to Newport. Something about having two fewer hands (because of Sophie being off the boat this leg without a replacement?). Talks about the electrical problem. Washing machine shot on deck. Slomo spray on the bow. Spreader cam view of the foredeck, the cockpit.Rob, below: Got a one-design boat now, so everything's very sensitive. Small changes in trim, daggerboards, can make important differences in speed. Blair, below, talks about the same thing. Rob talks about the smallest thing you can trim is the leech line up to big things like reefing the sail. Willy and Blair are primary trimmers. It's there job to be focused on trim the whole time. Blair talks about it, how in big weather it's big changes, but now it's small changes, small details.Kyle, in his bunk: Capey got is in a good spot in the trades when we left Brazil, and we managed to get a few clouds and wiggle our way into the lead. Tradewind sailing, so it's pretty straightforward, so Capey's getting some rest. Getting caught up on Netflix. Title: 1300 Position Report. Capey gets gingerly out of his bunk. Settles into nav station. Pulls up position report. Sam: Is it one thumbs up or two thumbs up. Cape gestures. Title: That's 2 thumbs up. Kyle: He's monitoring our angle. Capey to the cockpit: Nice to work down a bit. Another degree down, if we could... Dongfeng's going shitty, but lower. [He shakes his head.] They lost 5. Kyle: He's taking it kind of easy now. In the next few days as we're approaching Newport he'll be busy. Bouwe talks about doing well. It's a competitive advantage having a mental coach. In the last race, we were doing poorly, and she helped us work on our communication and trust. It's an advantage, especially as the race goes on. Slomo shot of washing machine in the cockpit. Carlo working on the bow to hoist a new sail. Crew grinding in the cockpit. Peter: Reckon he's an 8 or 9 (on a scale of 1-10) in terms of being detail-oriented. Carlo: He likes to play around with all the leads when we're triple-headed. Playing around with the leads on the J2, J3. Perfect... everything. Perfect bowl of food, perfect sleeping setup. All about the details.Stacey and Charlie on the aft pedestal. TJ on the helm. Washing machine. Stacey trimming. GoPro (Garmin) shot of grinding, helming. Nick, Stacey explain what Sargassum is. TJ, below, talks about it. "I don't know much about it. It's everywhere though." Nick talks about how there's tons of it. TJ talks about sailing through an island of it yesterday; full of garbage - rope, plastic. Nick talks about it, about how it collects trash. And small fish live underneath it. Stacey says in the last race they tried boiling and eating it, and it wasn't very nice. Nick talks about the fish that look just like the weed. Jena laughs; says she doesn't know. She talks about fish, flying fish. She has no idea what it's called in English. Mark talks about how trash in the ocean can impact the ocean environment. "Not really sure how to deal with it. We'll leave that to the scientists."Drone shots circling Dongfeng. Charles, below: Since the doldrums we are fighting for first place with Brunel, who is a bit ahead of us. They are fast... We are also fast. Are still three legs to go. And they are sailing better and better. So we are not only focusing on MAPFRE. Shots on deck; long lenses. Horace in the pit. Daryl on the aft pedestal. Horace sprays water on his face. Slomo washing machine cascade from inside the hatch. Carolijn on the stern, talks about all the boats pushing really hard. We won into Newport last time, and haven't won a leg this time so it would be a nice one to win. Slomo of determined look on sailors' faces. Charles below: Of course winning this leg would be fantastic. This place is probably the best arrival, people love sailing, all the city is waiting for the race. Slomo water in the cockpit with sargasso weed.Cool drone shots of TTToP sailing fast on starboard. Lucas goes on deck. Below, he tells about his earliest memories of going out on the water. Had some early near-drowning experiences that frightened his mum (he jokes). Slomo shots of Lucas in the washing machine. "It's nine months of nonstop sailing, which is cool. But can also be quite tiring." Pushing on, keeping the intensity. He gets out of his bunk, gets dressed. "This is the worst part. As soon as you put these on you want to take them straight off again." (re: the fouies). Talks about the challenges of the current conditions. He sits at the nav station with Dee. She talks about Lucas: He's a real find... Good in tough conditions. Confident around the boat. Good team player. Good on the helm: a natural surfer. Lucas: I've always looked up to the Volvo, and the guys that have done it. The elite of offshore sailing. Drone shot.Drone shots of AkzoNobel triple-heading. Slomo spray. Martine grinning on the helm. Crash cam footage. Martine eating below. Brian: Any good? Martine: Hunger is the best spice. Nico comes below, hangs up gear. "One you've gotta acknowledge it's a bad situation you didn't want to be in. 100 miles back from the leaders. You'd rather be neck-and-neck. Trick now is to push just as hard. Hoping for the weather at the end. The nature of the sport is you try all the way to the finish line. I've seen plenty of races where it happens... We need something to happen weather-wise for us to reel in the leaders... But it is nice doing 20 knots roughly toward where we want to go. Might like to take a month to wear them down, but we've got 6 days. Martine: Still very wet. It's not easy. In the first week we had 19 headsail changes in two watches. But we're going to have a lot of this so we're gonna get tired of this. Drone shots.Literally the exact same shot to open the video: Pablo below talking in Spanish about the last day's results. He repeats in English: Got some breeze after the doldrums, 20-22 knots. One of the steering cables broke, and the boat broached. But it's a good thing that both wheels are independent. So can steer, but you have to steer from the leeward side. But at least you can sail the boat in a straight line. Luckly Neti was on deck, he went down and took the spare one, and we fixed it quite quick, and in a half hour were able to sail the boat normally again. Night footage from the cabin as they sail in big wind, and someone (looks like Xabi) works on the wheel in a headlamp. Xabi below, in the aft crawl space, fixing the steering cable as Tamara talks to him in Spanish. Crash cam footage in black and white.Pablo, below, talks in Spanish about the latest sched, the fleet, the doldrums, the Sargasso Sea. He repeats in English: Last sched was so-so. The boats that are ahead are out of the doldrums, as we are. Talks about the Sargasso Sea, weed on the foils. Annoying. Need another technique for sailing in these conditions. Hopefully we can do it better, and it will mean a small advantage for us. (Maybe this is part of why TTToP lost out in this part of the leg, the same as SCA did last time around: They aren't as good at the trick of doing broaches/S-turns to clear weed from the foils.) Shots on deck of weed on the lifelines, sailing fast.Sargasso weed. Someone checks the keel with the endoscope. Keel, rudder shots. Sailing fast through weed. Slomo. Closeup of weed. Alex, below, explains about weed on the foils. Nipper and Trystan can look to see what's on the foils. Tricky when it's dark. The boat hook is handy as well. You can half wipe out, and it will get the weed off. At the moment it's all over the bow. It smells a bit downstairs. Not sure if it's Nipper or the weed. Nipper asks a riddle: Why do starfish cry? Because of the seaweed. (blank emoji)Tony working in the pit. Charlie on the helm. Washing machine as Vestas sails fast on starboard tack. Sargasso weed closeups on deck. Stacking on the weather rail. They sail thorugh a huge mass of weed. Boat slows way down; makes a rooster tail. Nick looks over the stern at the rudders. "Weather one's clear." He takes a boathook to the leeward rudder as they heel to windward. "There's a piece of rope on it." He shows the rope, then loops it around Martin and jokes that it's Neptune's Necklace for Martin's "first south-to-north equator crossing". Crew working on the foredeck.Stu grinding in slomo. WAshing machine. Jack, below: We're out of the doldrums, which is really nice. Next four days of wet fast reaching. Kevin on the helm in slomo with spray coming over the bow. Horace trimming the main on the stern. Pascal at the nav station: All the fleet was afraid to bear away... Was a small difference in distance. Plenty of things to do. Everybody wants to fight. Slomo spray. Marie on the pedestal, grinding.Spreader cam shot of cockpit. Dee, at the nav station, looks at the latest sched, and annouces it via PA to the cockpit. Dongfeng 3 miles ahead. Brunel 13 miles head. Skua flies over the boat. Martin, below: disappointment after the bad sched. Gives us motivation to keep tweaking the boat, and find some speed. Endless tweaking. Bianca talks about Liz being good about tweaking. Liz trims. Liz, below: I'm restless. Can't keep still. You think something could be better. Liz: Smallest thing you can tweak? Tack on a staysail. Taht's getting pretty anal when you start tweaking that. Shot of the skua overhead.Wet shots on the foredeck: Luke and Simeon rigging for a sail change. Justin and Emily in the pit. Luke at the clew. Brad: Just left the doldrums, but it was harsh on us. Coughed up quite a few miles to the other boats. A little down at the moment, but we'll be back up. Now we're in 15-20 knots, tight reaching. Nicolai, below, eats something tubular. "Maybe not. Put that back." He wraps it up. He talks to Emily in the bunk above him about food.Neti and Xabi working on the keel hydraulics. Joan talks to them in Spanish. Joan to the cockpit: "You don't have instruments, right?" He gives a thumbs up. Neti, below, talks in Spanish, apparently about the breakage and repair. They have a jury-rigged piece of string marking the keel position. He demonstrates releasing pressure, and then adding pressure. Closeup of the markings on the box under the string.We see the computer screen showing a graph of rising sea temperature. Charles takes a bath with a tea kettle on the stern. Marie on the helm: "I prefer hot weather. Cold... I don't like that. Because always my fingers and my feet, when I'm cold it's not good." Also, when it's hot you don't wear so much and don't have to spend 30 minutes putting on gear. Kevin: I'm a big like superman. Crew sleeping in the bow. Daryl: If the Southern Ocean were this warm, it would be perfect. Horace: I don't like the warm; I prefer the cold. It's more comfortable... Also, cold is bringing more wind. I like fast! Crew prepares for a squall. Pascal below with a fan. Distant drone shot of Dongfeng sailing under gray clouds. Drone circles as they peel from J0 to MH0 (I think).Joan, on deck: Passing the equator now. To the east of the leaders, which gives MAPFRE some leverage. Doldrums don't look very bad. The fleet doesn't have a large separation, so everyone will have pretty much the same opportunities. After the doldrums, typical tradewinds and sailing around the Bermuda High. With a low coming in that creates some opportunities. In lighter wind with MH0 partly rolled up, Xabi on the foredeck. Then Willy stands on the bow and gives hand signals to guide them through sargasso weed. Crew in the cockpit. Neti on a halyard putting a patch on the MH0 near the clew.Doldurms. Libby: Tomorrow we'll definitely be on the (something). Less than 24 hours of this rubbish. Instruments: 0.8 knots. Libby explains that the leaders will get into the new wind earlier, and will get away, but wait until May 7, and the bungee will come into action. They cross the equator, announced by Libby over the PA. Sunset. Trimming. Alex in the dusk: We crossed the equator just after lunchtime. Not that much has changed. Should be around 150 miles until we get into the tradewinds, and then we should be making pretty good speed to the finish line.Trystan jury rigs a freshwater pump. Talks about needing to fix things. Parko looks throgh binoculars. Stack forward. J3 clew (think theyr'e triple-heading). Alex working in the pit. Alex, on the bow, talks about how even if you're down you don't want to let it affect the others in the crew. Important to keep pushing along, and be positive. Antonio smiles. Trystan on the helm: This sucks; I hate it. It's slow and hot... I'm just over it.Evening drone shots of them drifting in light winds with rain on the horizon. Parko, on the helm: This part of the world is known for a relatively easy crossing. The land breeze helps. Clouds. Peter brushes his teeth. Ben mixes up something in the galley. Bird on ddeck (black tern?) Ben looks at clouds. Trystan says Libby has a good point that looking at the scheds for the next few days will be pretty depressing. But there will be a compression coming into Newport, and that will make or break the leg.Sam, to Capey: What's the race report. Capey: Good. We're winning the Volvo. The leg. For right now at least... [To Sam]: Are you the admiral? Sam: What? Capey: Admirals and assholes. Do you know that one?Sailing under clouds. Rain dripping on TJ under the boam. Heavy rainfall, something brown in the water (Sargasso weed?). Stacey grinning in rain under the boam. TJ, on the bow, talks about the light conditions, wanting to go a little faster. Jena and Tony grinding. Skua overhead. Gybing the MH0 from port to starboard. Watching a whale to starboard. They sail through a big patch of sargasso. SiFi talks about it. SiFi, at the nav station, reads out the latest sched over the PA. They're in fourth, behind Dee, Brunel, and AkzoNobel. Mark: Just crossed the equator into the northern hemisphere. Talks about the sargasso weed. Accumulates on the foils. Just have to deal with it.Drone shot of AkzoNobel going through sargasso. "Massive patch to leeward." Emily: Just crossed the equator and have just gotten into the Sargasso Sea. Brad, below, shows the endoscope. Underwater shot of Brad flossing the rudder. Jules: The only way to get it off is to physically stop the boat and make the boat sail in reverse. Drone shot of them doing a backdown.Drone shot at night of Vestas with flashlight shining on sail. Drone shot looking forward as the drone goes *through the shrouds*. Shot of the position on the mast readout showing them crossing the equator. Dee: We can see Vestas, we can see Brunel. Shot of Vestas to weather. Henry, on the helm: Happy to be in the northern hemisphere heading home. Lucas: I felt a little lost this morning; got up on the wrong side... Everything feels a little backwards. Drone shot. Dee: When you're at the front of the fleet it's harder than being the hunter. She talks about frustrating clouds. A bit of a game of cat and mouse. It's the nature of the beast. Lucas: We knew this was going to happen. The breeze shut down from the front. Annalise talks about the latest position update: Vestas pulling ahead of them slowly. Dee: rest of the fleet bearing down on us. Hopefully we'll be in the trades in a day. Drone shot.Simeon: Have been 70% of the way around the world, and haven't seen any wildlife. Just a few random dolphins. 12 or 13 years ago I remember a lot more; orcas, big whales... I don't know, it's the time of year or could be we need to find a biologist and get a proper explanation. Nicho, on the helm: You always hope it's better than it is, but the impact... The difference is quite scary. In certain areas you'd see schools of dolphins, 200, 300 of them. Albatrosses, dozens of them circling the boat in the Southern Ocean. This time it's been scary how little. Martine: 15,000 miles of sailing, and haven't seen... Nicho: It is a worry. Hopefully up here in the Gulf Stream we'll see rapid improvement. Nicolai: Main reason most of us do this race is to see the world, see wildlife, see the cities. But seeing pollution is dramatic. Hopefully we can turn the tide. Martine: Talks about the loss of wildlife. Emily: This is how nature resets itself. Probably won't happen in our lifetime. Seeing a huge decline in animals on land and out here. We're messing up, bigtime.Charles, in the pit, gives a thumbs up in the rain. He talks in French. Marie talks in French. She washes her hair. Jeremie asks: This is your first shower in one week? Marie: Eh, I had a little one. Jack talks about 7 days without a shower. "A good fragrance within the boat. From all the crew. Perfect 25.5 degrees water temperature. Couldn't ask for more." Jeremie, to Stu on the helm: Having fun yet? Stu: Oh, I love this. Pascal at the nav station, talks about trying to find the way across the doldrums. Not easy. More rain on deck.Very high drone shot. Peter, shirtless below: Had a pretty good night last night. Can see the boats in front of us, Vestas and Dongfeng. Bouwe: How's the morning? Little clouds, a little rain. Shot of a gybe. Other boat to port. Nina: I have the craziest dreams offshore. I think it's because your sleep is broken up, all the gybing. They're really real. Sam asks Bouwe: When you're offshore, what do you dream about? Bouwe: Sex, with my wife. [To Capey: Isn't that true?] Capey, eating: I don't dream of sex with your wife. Nina: I had this really strange dream in the Southern Ocean. That the Volvo Ocean Race wasn't real; it was a coverup for a drug-smuggling operation... We're in an escape plane, and a missile is coming, and a tracker was in my bag... Sam asks Abby: How long is it until Neptune comes? Abby: Less than 24 hours. Bouwe: Three. Here, here, and here. (He demonstrates a triple reverse mohawk.) Abby: I dream about my kid. I think when you get so tired you start to hallucinate. She asks Bouwe what his dreams are about, and he repeats the "sex with my wife" line. Abby laughs. "That was honest." Low drone shot circling the boat under clouds. Abby, at night in black and white: We are either just passing or about to pass Turn the Tide on Plastic. Shot of them to port. Carlo: The other day I had a nightmare. I went to this fishing farm, where they were breeding salmon. I went inside and I was being chased by the fishermen that were working in there. But they had fish skin and it was melting. It was really strange. Peter on the helm. Carlo: Just lost a little bit on them. Louis: I've had many crazy dreams, but they're too crazy to share. Peter: I'm always pretty tired for some reason. Shot of Kyle sleeping below with the engine running.Closeups of B&G instruments with nothing displayed. Neti, below, explains that they have "No batteries, no systems, nothing." Neti and Joan working in the bottom part of the cabin. Pablo, on the helm, talks about the issue in Spanish. Shot of the compass binnacle. Xabi stands talking on the satellite phone, explaining the situation. Computer screen showing electronic schematics. Neti working on an instrument panel while engine runs. Joan and Neti talking in Spanish. Joan stands on the stern on the sat phone, holding it high for better antennae operation. Closeups of various components. Xabi talks about fuses blowing, the electronics breaking, the PLC (?) broken means they can't control the keel. Working on a workaround. Pablo talks in Spanish in the cockpit. Instruments behind him apear to have readings, though. Pablo, Neti, and Xabi below work on the keel box. Xabi, to the cockpit: 'It's moving. So what do you need now?" They laugh at the response. Neti: "It's 33 now; what works for you?" He manually opens a valve. "There. That's 30." They laugh. Looks like they're manually bypassing the fuse to operate the keel hydraulic pump manually. Neti, on deck, explains that they took a switch from the bilge pump, and rigged up a system where they can move the keel. It's tricky, and in windy conditions would be very hard, because one person would need to be below at all times to move the keel. He then repeats the explanation in Spanish.Closeups of B&G instruments with nothing displayed. Neti, below, explains that they have "No batteries, no systems, nothing." Neti and Joan working in the bottom part of the cabin. Pablo, on the helm, talks about the issue in Spanish. Shot of the compass binnacle. Xabi stands talking on the satellite phone, explaining the situation. Computer screen showing electronic schematics. Neti working on an instrument panel while engine runs. Joan and Neti talking in Spanish. Joan stands on the stern on the sat phone, holding it high for better antennae operation. Closeups of various components. Xabi talks about fuses blowing, the electronics breaking, the PLC (?) broken means they can't control the keel. Working on a workaround. Pablo talks in Spanish in the cockpit. Instruments behind him apear to have readings, though. Pablo, Neti, and Xabi below work on the keel box. Xabi, to the cockpit: 'It's moving. So what do you need now?" They laugh at the response. Neti: "It's 33 now; what works for you?" He manually opens a valve. "There. That's 30." They laugh. Looks like they're manually bypassing the fuse to operate the keel hydraulic pump manually. Neti, on deck, explains that they took a switch from the bilge pump, and rigged up a system where they can move the keel. It's tricky, and in windy conditions would be very hard, because one person would need to be below at all times to move the keel. He then repeats the explanation in Spanish.Moonlight overhead. A small bird (a swallow?) on the deck in the semi-darkness. Instruments. Tony on the helm. Talks about having reached the north Atlantic. 1 degree south. Getting into shifty breeze. Hopefully 30 hours from now we'll be in the trades. Looking pretty good at the moment. Got a lot of boats close; "at the pointy end of the fleet, which is a good place to be." Talks about the doldrums.Blair: Getting used to sailing on their own. Broke through a cloud line, and had to stick with our line. Got a bad sched; lost 20 miles on the leaders... Every cloud is very different. Haven't done the best job. The ones that screwed us the other night developed on top of us, and we couldn't do anything about it. Certainly not our best friends at the moment, the clouds. Willy talks in Spanish about the comptetition, the weather. Shots of them sailing on starboard. Drone shots of them triple-heading with the MH0 with clouds and rain behind them.Night time; red instruments. Sound of water. Stu, below: Sailing at night on these boats... can rely on the feel; sometimes it's even faster. Generally a more serious feel to night sailing. Shots of them sailing at night. Stu calls trim from the foredeck: "A little bit of masthead on." Shifting the stack. Kevin, in the morning: There are not many sports. Not many moments in life you are able to (something) during the night. Pascal comes up and kisses him on the cheek. Kevin: I love ocean sailing. You feel like you're living your life fully. More night shots: Carolijn shines a light on the sails. Horace: Sometimes you're very tired. Normally during the night you're still sailing, fighting, with the other competitors. But it's cool. This is life in the volvo ocean race. More night shots. Daryl, on the helm: "It's fully done on feel, and what the boat's behaving like. It's pretty cool when you get it right. Not so good when you get it wrong." (he laughs) Carolijn: Besides the feel, you use the numbers on the mast. We put them in night-vision mode, so instead of white they're red. To avoid blinding you. We see the deck instrument readouts switch from white to red. Kevin: Jokes about seeing the head torch of Pascal looking out the hatch, blinding them. Marie, below: Yesterday was good because we had a bird for 2 or 3 hours. He just turned around the top of hte mast. Sometimes we had the shadow. It was really cool. Night shots in which you can't really see; I'll take their word for it. Moon, clouds. Night drone shot with light on the mainsail.Drone approaches Brunel sailing on starboard, goes under the boom and gets caught by Peter, who gives a thumbs-up.Drone shot with competitor in the background. Charlie talks with crew in the cockpit. TJ steers. SiFi: It's a little different than forecast. He talks about the clouds, the convergence line. Big header coming into Brazil. Squashed hte fleet up a bit. Made good gains on Dee, but Brunel has closed up a bit... Have to see what happens during the day. Land breeze now; sea breeze later. TTToP to port with a rainbow. Drone shots. TTToP approaches on starboard; they gybe ahead to cover. SiFi talks about tomorrow. Crew stacks to weather. TTToP on their starboard quarter. A small fishing boat; Mark waves. TTToP astern in rain. Crew shirtless in the cockpit. Phil showers under the boom. SiFi looks at a tablet to explain the latest sched. Stacey: It's been a busy day; rain clouds and shifts. Gybing. But a good result for us. We're all in a line, going out to sea, bow forward and leeward boat. And we had a shower. It was overdue; it is day 8. First shower of the race. Drone shot of Vestas triple-heading.Luke, on the pedestal: Had a good sched, back in the hunt. Tradewinds on the other side of these clouds. Taking off the miles; everyone's happy on board. Emily: We were gybing every hour. Have to make a go of it. As much coffee as you can take. Brad, on the mainsheet, talks about the transitions. Jules, in the hatch, talks about this gybe vs the other gybe. Windier conditions with spray coming over the bow.Nicolas looks concerned. Maneuver in twilight. Stacking forward. Nicolas: Because the wind is a bit different than expected, we are going to see Vestas. Vestas has just gybed, probably because they can see Dongfeng and Dongfeng has gybed. So now we've gybed. Nicolas looks through binoculars. Nicolas, below, talks about the achievement, racing big boats around the world. Enjoying the moment. Sailing at night. Moon above the mast. Drone shot of TTToP gybing from port to starboard with Vestas ahead of them. Drone shot of them sailing on starboard with Vestas to leeward. Liz rubs her face: A really annoying blue boat catching up. And a really annoying red boat [Dongfeng] catching up. And a really annoying yellow boat [Brunel]. Liz talks about Nicolas being a one-design racer, and his French humor. Nicolas: We had quite a hard night... Lost a lot to Vestas, Dongfeng, and Brunel. But now everyone is within a few miles. It's a bit of a mess with the wind; there are clouds everywhere. Wind very different than expected. I try to understand what's happening now, and what's going to happen in the next hours. Nicolas at nav station. Nicolas talks a below about French sailing culture versus the rest of the world.Time lapse of the cockpit from the stern at night. Jules, at the nav station, explains that they're trying to negotiate some current, but didn't do as well as the boats ahead of them. Emily, below, sprays water on herself. Jules: Using larger sails, VMG running. Less concerned about the current, more about the clouds. Unstable wind; lots of rain.Drone shot with container ship in the horizon ahead of them as they sail in light winds. More drone shots of them sailing under the MH0. Pole shots. Trystan, below, explains that they're coming to the northeastern point of Brazil. Obviously not overly pleased with where we're lying. But opportunity ahead with the doldrums and the equator to cross. Guys ahead are easing up, so a chance to catch up. Shifting the stack forward. Stacking below. Peter explains forward stacking below. Bessie stacking below.Libby explains that pushing north early was a bad call; punishing them now. David and her as the decision-makers can make a mistake and it's a big loss. The crew can make a mistake with a bad peel, and lose a few miles, but this is more frustrating. Struggling to find the answers to get back in the race. Nav station. Flopping mainsail. Libby explains her idea: tactical motoring. Everyone has a fixed amount of fuel, and they can choose when to motor. Trystan and Ben talk about how non-fun it is to have no wind. Stacking forward.Capey at the nav station. He comes on deck, reports on the competition to Peter. Sam: What's the concern, Pete? Peter: Capey's our navigator. He's very experienced. It was his tenth time around the Horn. Does an incredible job on the charts, keeping us safe. (Capey pees off the transom in the background, then moves gingerly around with an obviously painful back issue.) Peter tries to engage him in the story; Capey's not having any of it. Just talks about the race. Bouwe: I think he's one of the best in the world. And we just have that mutual understanding. It's straightforward. You have a plan, and you execute the plan. I think that's why I like to sail with him. Abby comes up and does a Capey impression. "It's that itme of day and I'm coming through." She goes to the stern to mime pooping. A funky yellow fishing boat comes by: Drone shots from close aboard as they haul pots. Carlo: I had wet boots in the Southern Ocean, and this nail, for some reason, is starting to fall off. He shows his left big toe, which looks kind of scary and discolored. Carlo: Capey says we're driving in about two hours. Have Akzo to windward. Need to put a second sheet on the masthead zero. We see from the drone as Nina puts the sheet on. Bouwe talks about a big cloud, and how it affects the wind. He explains that they'll probably gain some on Akzo due to the cloud. "Very often the luck of the draw is involved in it." Drone shot of hte stern, bow, and barbecue on the aft deck of a big container ship: "Shanghai Highway". Crew of the ship waves and jumps up and down. Kyle, in the sunset: Had a lovely day today. Sam had the drone over a container ship where they were having a lovely barbecue. Nina: I feel like Kyle has his Saturday best on. "It's a good day for Kyle; maybe not for us." Beautiful sunset clouds, slomo with moon.Drone shot of Dongfeng sailing in the sunrise. Faces: Pascal, Marie, Jack. Drone shot. Pascal works a Rubik's cube. Marie works on it. Jack works on it. Jack summarizes current situation: Nearing the corner of Brazil; need to decide how close to cut it. Lots of work; sleeping less, more sail changes. Drone shot of them triple-heading. Stu on the helm in the morning. "Going to be a very nice day today." Marie: "Yes." Kevin, in his bunk, holds the Rubik's cube and talks about the different strategic questions in the leg. Charles on the helm. Charles works on the Rubik's Cube, talks about it in French. He pretends to solve it quickly, but then reveals he has two cubes, one already solved. Closeup of the winch, with Daryl trimming. Stu, on the helm, talks about winning a competition in school; solved it in 47 seconds. He hands the wheel over to Marie. He explains the solution. Stu explains the technique to Charles.Working on the bow. Crew laughing in the cockpit at sunrise. Charlie comes up from below to report on the sched: "Generally a little higher and quicker than those guys." He goes on to discuss strategy with Tom. Phil, on the helm, talks about his knee being sore, which is why he's standing on one foot. TJ does pushups. TJ, below, washes his shirt in a bucket, then wrings it out of the forward hatch. Shirt drying on a pedestal. Tom steering. Someone going out to the MH0 clew to put a new sheet on for the gybe; stumbles coming back over the rail. (Maybe Nick?) Tony, on the helm, explains that dongfent has gybed, so now they're going to gybe to protect their position. We see the gybe. SiFi looks through binoculars to starboard (presumably at Dongfeng), talks about them being on port tack.Sunrise drone shot. Francesca: We're still leading, so this is good. Last sched was not the best one. We can see Vestas (gestures behind her). My parents had a cruising boat, 30-foot cruising boat. I was born in January, and in February I was already on the boat. Slomo of Francesca adjusting her cap. "They had this system of bungee that made a little bed for me." Shot of her left forearm tattoos of elephans. Francesca on the helm in slomo. Learned how to manage herself in the hard moments. Had some hard moments in the Southern Ocean. Was more like mentally tough than physically. Push myself, tomorrow will be another day, it will be better. Instruments on the mast. Dee by the shrouds. Dee: To see Frankie grow from the start of this project to now has been incredible. Came in with no offshore experience; had an Olympic background. But she does make you laugh, because sometimes she says yeah, yeah, yeah. But you realize she didn't understand any of it. [We see everyone in the crew saying hello in their native dialect.] Francesca tells a story of Frederico rescuing a flying fish that hit the board. Francesca: An amazing experience to sail around in the environment I love, with the group of friends. Worst thing: the freeze-dried. The food is not really nice at times. Sunset drone shot.Drone shot of the rig. Closeup of the outrigger. Nicolai: Talks about one design, same sails. It all comes down to how you set up the sails, small adjustments. Maybe gain 0.01 knots of boatspeed. But over a week that's going to pay off. Shots of the sails. Nicolai explains the outrigger. He explains that it's like an airplane wing: At high speed want it flat, at low speed/low wind want it deep and powerful. Simeon: Look a lot at the heel trim. The longitudinal trim. And the shape, the amount of wetted surface. But also the stability. In light air we're not planing, so we want that fat ass out of the water. So we trim forward. Nicolai talks to someone below about the stack below. Simeon talks about the foils, keel, lift vs. drag. Like how we trim the sails, we basically trim the hull as well. Stacking below, close drone shot. Stacking sails forward. Jules talks about the other boats, and then the instruments, as the gauge they look at. Art vs. science. Helmsman's feel.Neti talks in Spanish as they sail in 15 knots of wind on starboard tack. He then repeats in English: After a shitty night, they got stuck in bad wind. Have been losing the whole day. Hopefully we can catch up again. It's been a hard day for us. But it's what it is. Lost so many miles in 15 hours. We knew that Turn the Tide on Plastic was well positioned. We didn't expect to lose as much with Dongfeng and Vestas... Have to keep pushing and not give up. Cannot say we are happy with what happened last night. But we push, and we're here for racing. Shot looking forwar as they sail faster than they have been. Blair grimaces into the camera. Joan comes up and gives the latest sched. Willy trimming. Smiles. Joan and Blair at the nav station.Drone shot of Brunel with setting sun behind her. Below, Kyle jokes about trying to wake up Carlo. He says he's already awake. "He's on deck. He's trimming the main." Carlo gets up. Kyle shows his watch: 10 minutes late. Kyle teases Carlo in the galley. Carlo: All day long... Kyle: You might not be able to hear him, but he's saying that he loves me. Drone shot from close ahead of Brunel. Abby: Today is Friday, and my wish for the weekend is that I be able to teleport off the yacht and spend the weekend at home. Nina: 10 knots more of boatspeed. Or a shower. Peter, on the helm: No-sail-change Sunday. Alberto: Some pancakes and ice cream would be nice. Bouwe: Back home it's another big day, in Denmark, for young kids, when they become 15 years old, it's a big thing for church. I hope they're having a good party. Kyle: I wish that King Neptune shows a bit of leniency toward Nina Curtis.... I think she's gonna be punished pretty badly, and I hope that she survives it. Drone shot. Nina: I'm a little bit nervous. King Neptune is tormenting me every day... Kyle told me how to use my own watch, and it has GPS, so I'm keeping track of how many degrees until we get to the equator. And I've only got 14 degrees until I meet Neptune for the first time. She does a high kick. "I"m coming at you King Neptune." Sam asks Capey to wear a mic, and he doesn't want to. Nina explains that Capey had a bad fall and landed on the foot brace in the cockpit sole. Bouwe explains that Capey was lucky. Things can happen in a matter of no time. Capey moves gingerly across the cockpit. Kyle checks the mast. Beautiful sunset clouds. Wake.View looking up the slot. Drone shot with morning sun. Stu: Lots of nice sailing for today. Which is a nice change from the last day or two, which had unbelievable cloud activity. Talks about having a sudden squall with everything on the wrong side (stack, water ballast, OBR). Didn't work out well; lost a lot of miles. Shots out the cabin at night with lightning on deck. Horace works in red light as thunder rolls. Rain. Kevin reads a sched on the PA. "So we've been the slowest of the fleet except (someone)." Pascal talks in French. A bird (gannet? booby?) flies over the masthead. Drone shot. Carolijn on the helm.Vestas sails toward a squall. Charlie reads the latest sched on the PA while the crew in the cockpit (Tony driving, Mark grinding, Stacey trimming) listens. "Hooray." "Thank you." Tony explains: Just got a sched in; last two were interesting because this morning we were in 30+ knots of pressure and sort of scattered the fleet. Now it's tradewind sailing. We weren't the fastest, but we're at the top and we held our height. "What's my secret? My secret is being heavily caffeinated." Then he talks about crackers: "They're a savory treat for us." Beautiful sunset clouds. Stacking aft in the dusk, "Two, six!" Sailing wiht the instruments illuminating. Tony on the helm (Tony's always on the helm.)In the late afternoon, Martine: We saw Vestas earlier on. We've spent pretty much the whole day in sight of Brunel. She talks more about the competition. Crew sailing in the cockpit in the sunset. Martine talks about the good breeze and the cool sunset.Night shot with red instrument lights. Annalise says they're going to hold on hoisting it because there's only 7 knots [of wind] at the moment. Dee, below, talks about the difficult night. Light wind and lots of sail changes. Felt like they spent all night in the rain. So most of the team was up most of the night. Now they have the J0 and a staysail, so it's a forgiving setup. Just hope that some of those behind them had the cloud issues too. Spreader cam view during the day of the foredeck, the stern. Dee: People are tired, but you get an extra buzz when you're at the front. But it's hard when you're getting hunted all the time. We'll get another position report in an hour. Shots of people sleeping in their bunks. Drone shot of TTToP sailing silhouetted against the sun. Dee comes on deck: We have redeemed ourselves! (Crew cheers.) 50 miles to MAPFRE. Martin can't believe it. Dee: Dongfeng lost a lot in that sched... Vestas is on our tail just to leeward. "We're the leaders of the pack." Annalise: I think I'll take that. Fastest boat in the fleet for no sleep. Lucas talks about it being worth it. Drone shot.Liz on the helm: They're trying to pick out a new theme song, and I think they need help. Stern cam view of Bianca singing and dancing Gangnam Style. Francesca: Sings "mananana". Henry: It's the Muppets that go... Lucas: I don't know the name of it though. Bianca: I feel good, I knew that I would... Henry: Dancing Queen. Something like that. Lucas: Once I was a very young man, a very young man but not too clever... Dee: I do let them know if I don't like it. Want something upbeat, deal with victories and losses, get us up when we arrive and when we leave. It's a tough choice.Reefing in a squall. Rain. Parko in the rain in slomo. Parko eating below. Clouds. Parko: Each morning it's a rollcall. We get smacked by a fresh cloud, sail change... Trying to balance that so the boat's on course with not too much or too little sail. Near the equator at sunrise and sunset there's a lot of clouds. When they rain they're pushing or sucking air. In the light conditions have large sails up, and then it's easy to be caught out. Slomo foredeck work. Stacking. Libby on the helm. Annemieke grinding. More stacking. Shot of spray washing off hte foot of the headsail. A skua flying overhead.Paper hat crown on Bouwe. He and Carlo (also in a crown) hold a Dutch flag, and talk about celebrating the birthday of the king. Carlo explains how everyone in Holland goes crazy. You want to be in Amsterdam. Bouwe on the helm: It's a big thing. And I'm a royal fan. Alberto comes on deck in an orange shirt that says "Itajai". Where are the cookies? Bouwe: They're gone. Carlo and Bouwe improves a classic game, with a cookie dangling from a boathook. Bouwe blindfolds himself with the Dutch flag. Bouwe tries to eat the cookie as Carlo dangles it in front of him. He eventually gets it. "Yeah!" That was the best cookie-eating I've ever seen. Carlo: And now we drink beers. Carlo dangles the cookie for Alberto. Bouwe talks in Dutch. He leads "three cheers for our king." Bouwe, of Alberto: He earns a cookie. Of course. I think Italians want to be part of the Dutch empire. Alberto: If there is a party I'm happy to be part of it. Bouwe, back on the helm (though still in his crown), looking serious. He talks in Dutch some more. Sam to Bouwe: Did you have a good king's day? Bouwe: Yes. Always nice to remember where you come from. Slomo shot of Bouwe.Nicho, on deck: We're halfway through our gas. He explains: heating gas. "She's high." Martine explains. Emily goes to check. Emily: I told people not to change so I could keep track." Emily counts bottles, she calls up: We've got 8 full bottles left. "False alarm." Martine is relieved.Night vision shot from the stern camera as they deal with squalls and rain. Shouting, grinding.Tamara talks in Spanish about the current situation with the other boats. Rob, on the helm, talks about their current surroundings. Massive clouds, hopefully through the worst of it now. Should start getting lifted tonight and will be able to ease the sails, faster angles. They knew that getting offshore was the key, and Turn the Tide did that and got to the outside. They're leading, and will probably do more through the night, then hopefully things will change and they can start getting back into them. Crew grinding. (Maybe it's just me but there's a definite sameness to these last few videos.) Night vision shots of the cockpit, with rain. Night vision shots of maneuvers, light conditions with flopping. Xabi talks in Spanish, then repeats in English. Big squalls, big rain, big wind. When a sched came through they lost 9 miles on Dongfeng. Now another sched will come in 2 hours. For sure they had some big things to deal with too and hopefully we can catch them up.Ben explains that they broke the stopper on the daggerboard, so they thought they'd have some afts and crafts in the afternoon and fix it. Witty reads the sched: We were 70 miles behind the leader; now we're 24. Peter: It's been light overall. J0 to the MH0. Frustrating really. Started the day badly, got hit by a lot of squalls. Hard for everyone last night. Stemmed the daage, but frustratingly light. Witty explains the situation. We don't want to go left, because left pressure left, more pressure right. Flopping. Night shots of them working the foredeck and cockpit.Wrestling the J0 on the foredeck; stacking it. Pole shots: outboard, rudder, bow, keel. Crewmembers tired, sleeping. Parko: So, over the last two scheds we've been the most western boat. The other boats are pushing down over the top. Clouds... Tough night, quite a few sail changes. It's been a rough one. We've lost quite a few miles. Lost the strong position we were in. Fighting to work east a little bit, to get back in a position where we can tack again. Witty reads a sched from below. Repairs to the top of the daggerboard (I think). Mixing epoxy, applying it.Wind noise and winches at night.Night shot with moon behind clouds. Francesca, below in red light: I'm Francesca from Turn the Tide on Plastic. We are sailing just over a big cloud. The last sched was really good. Second sched in a row where we are leading, so it's fantastic. Wind conditions are tricky, up and down, try to focus on the trim, sail as fast as possible. We'll see tomorrow morning, but we think we are doing a really solid leg right now. Just need to keep doing it for another two weeks. And we will see.Drone shots as Dongfeng sails under J0. Carolijn: Generally sail with 9 crew. Talks about positions: skipper, navigator, main trimmer, headsail trimmer, pitman, bowman. Talks about Daryl, their offshore helmsman at the moment. Instruments, spray. Pascal reads out the sched on the PA. Carolijn talks about the navigator. "Generally he wears glasses to look really smart, and make smart decisions about strategy." Pascal at the nav station. Pascal: "Lift, lift, lift; strong wind and lift all the time." Kevin trimming the main. Grinding. Carolijn narrates about Kevin adjusting the mainsheet. Talks about the combo of main and headsail trim, and coordination with the helm. Closeup of Kevin easing the mainsheet. Drone shot. Carolijn talks about the pit. "We call it the piano." Pitman organizes and coordinates between the front and back of the boat. Closeup of the pit controls. She talks about trimming the headsail. "If it gets to hard I ask Horace for help and we grind with two." She explains about trim. "At the pointy end of the boat we have the bowman. They live at the front there, and they have a very busy job. It's a very hard job because it's the wettest part of the boat and you need a lot of strength to get things done.... Kevin is Speedy Gonzalez." Drone shots.Radar shows a cloud. Night time crew work. Simeon: "Tack coming off, Nicolai!" "Can we have the jib on here?" Simeon, below, explains that they can see the rain showers coming by on the radar. They can see, like now, when the cloud has gone over and sucked all the wind away, so they switch to a bigger sail. Someone (Justin?) talks with Brian about the massive cloud sucking up all that energy. Lightning. Nicolai: I think it's day 5... I miss the Southern Ocean. Sail flopping. "And it's warm. I hate the warm."Drone shot approaches, goes under the boom, and continues to weather. Sam briefly visible operating the controls in the shot. Heh. Nice.Stacey at the mast. Rain squall behind them. TJ bagging up the J1. Stacking forward. "Ready, two, six!" Deploying the MH0. Stacey working in the pit. She laughs: I was just thinking how different this evening is from any evening on the last leg. Sun hats and tee shirts, no one is complaining about anything weather-related. Even when it does rain it's short-lived. Quite warm inside the boat. In the Southern Ocean it's constant condensation dripping down below. Nick and Tony in the galley. TJ grinds. Wake. TJ on the helm. "Where'd the hat come from? Australia. I asked my dad what's the best hat to buy. Akubra." He talks about the hat, about sun protection.Drone shot with sunset behind the boat. Crew sailing in rougher conditions. Frederico: Finally sailing on starboard, close reaching, after three days upwind. Did very well. We're the eastern boat. We think it will pay off, but is quite risky. But we are confident in our navigator. We see out the cabin as Dee comes out and relays the sched. Dee explains: We were the fastest boat in the sched. We've got more breeze, which is why we positioned ourselves furthest east. Just need to keep it up and stay focused. Annalise: A lot of upwind, which is slow. Prefer to do 20 knots... but it makes it easier when the position report comes in and we're doing well. Drone shot. Frederico's hand on a winch. Frederico below: The race is quite brutal.... It's just about self management. To take care of your emotions when you are so tired. It's hard, but you ahve to learn how to cooperate with everyone around... It's hard. I think I've grown to be a different man in all the legs so far. When we started very fresh, I never had experience offshore. Now we can sail the boat close to the other teams. I think everybody step up, and we're a really strong team now. Drone shot with rain in the distance.Alberto, in the cockpit, explains that they had a very bad night, and lost a lot of distance on TTToP and Vestas. Bouwe, on the wheel: Turn the Tide and Vestas made a very nice move and gained 20 miles on everybody... Just keep trying, trying to improve, sail against numbers... And hope soon we can crack the sheet a little. Below, Louis talks about trying to improve. In the cockpit, Alberto: The secret to going faster is a good engine and a lot of fuel. But don't tell anyone; it's a secret. Awesome low-altittude drone shots, slomo, from in front with a competitor behind them. Kyle, below: Today is ANZAC day. Nina: A good day to catch up wiht friends and family, have a few drinks. (She waves.) Peter: It's our biggest wartime memorial we have every year. Obviously a long way from both NZ and Europe, but definitely thoughts with them. Shot from the stern as they prepare for a maneuver. Drone shot with competitor behind. Kyle: King Neptune is coming to the yacht to visit Nina. Alberto: Nina's the one who's very excited. Nina: Can't even deal. The torment, with the equator and King Neptune, it's started already. It's gonna be three or four days. They're too excited about it. I'm very nervous. Bouwe looking serious as night falls. Peter: She reckons we could sell the hair we're gonna get off her head. Or donate it, to kids. It's up to her to decide. Nina: I don't think anyone will want it anymore [after all this offshore yacht racing]. Someone calls down below for a peel. Abby: Too many. Crew comes up, they hoist the new sail. (MH0?) Slomo of sunset. Nina: I wanted to say to Caitlan, that I'm really sorry if I don't have any hair when I'm maid of honor at her wedding. Maybe if Caitlin also pays to King Neptune, maybe he'll take only half the hair, or an eyebrow... Sorry Caitlin. Night time shot of stars.Simeon: It was a hectic night; hit some good squalls. Crash cam footage at night of them easing sheets. Simeon says the fleet is in a line west to east. Trying to stick their neck out and be the first one to go around the corner of Brazil. Drone shot from overhead. Simeon: That's the cool thing of this sport is motivate yourself. Everyone is tired, but it gives energy when everyone is into it. You don't have it always right, but when you have it right it's good teamwork. Hopefully we can keep it up for a week and be mentally, physically stronger than the rest of the teams. And a bit lucky, and it can make a difference. Justin: It's the first time I've seen them headed. Simeon: Nothing comes without energy. Lots of energy. It's a game of human performance. Everyone is almost as fast as each other. Pushing all the way to the Hague.Witty, on the helm, talks about strategy with the exclusion zone. Tacking now to cover the boats behind. A high percentage play. Not what he really wants to do. Tacking the MH0. Slomo grinding. Slomo stacking. Lowering the J1. Libby and Witty at the nav station. Witty: "Vestas is 1.7 miles behind the leader. That would mean the fucking Scallywags are leading... Well done all." Peter, on deck, explains that they've gone north and the rest of the fleet has gone east. It's a bit risky. Parko, on the helm: It's nice to be taking the lead after a shaky start. A couple of new faces on board, and took us a while to find our feet. But there's two different breezees right now and it's anyone's game. We've only just started. Sunset. Sailing as darkness falls.Drone shots: High overhead, overtaking to weather, circling the bow. Another boat (MAPFRE?) astern and to weather, and another boat astern and to leeward. Shot of a red boat (MAPFRE?) crossing their bow. Witty, on the helm, points out the other boats all around them. Witty: "Let's get the sails over guys." (In preparation for tacking.) We see the tack onto port. Trystan explains the Brazil exclusion zone. Dongfeng ahead, MAPFRE to leeward. Our position with the fleet is quite good. Stacking.Joan talks on deck: yesterday had big showers, had to take a few of them on starboard, and ended up left of the rhumb line. Got passed by Vestas and Turn the Tide. In a group of four boats with Dongfeng ahead. Xabi recaps the same events in Spanish. They're especially concerned about Dongfeng because of how close they are in the standings. Shot looking forward as they sail to weather on port under the J1. Rob on the helm. Pablo trimming. Shifting the stack to leeward in preparation for tacking. Then we see the tack. Tamara grinding. spreader cam view of the deck with the J1 flying. Night-vision shots with rain. Night-vision shot of the bow with spray coming over.Stacking on the foredck in light air in the early morning. Jack talks about how they have a very different mix of nationalities and backgrounds. Kevin talks in French about the same thing. More stacking. Carolijn: Language can be a barrier sometimes; have a lot of frogs, a lot of Frenchies, on board. Kevin talks in French. Daryl: Can be challenging at times to get the right message across. But we've all worked really hard on that in thte training, and we all get on well together. Crew grinding. Sunset. Jack: I think we've found quite a good balance to make it work for everyone. No real egos, which is really nice. Horace in the pit. Horace: We from different part of the city and speak different language. It's not about a different country. It's a human. Everybody learn... Charles in slomo on the helm in the sunset. More pretty closeups in slomo with the sunset: Carolijn, Daryl. Kevin talks in French. Horace: Every person is like a different book. Like a different weapon. And you learn how much you can. Pascal talks in French. Carolijn translates: Scallywag's got 12 knots. Stu's face. Sunset slomo of Carolijn.Cool drone shot with low sun behind Vestas. Mark in the pit. SiFi and Charlie at the nav station. SiFi talks about being able to do well with a cloud against the fleet. Partly by luck, he says, they and Turn the Tide got to the east and slipped ahead. It's all about trying to get to the east. So now we're back on port tack, heading slightly south of east. TJ looks at computer with SiFi as he reads off the sched and explains the strategy. TJ: Yeah, it's all good. Good number; heading back on port. Set up nicely for the big long one, heading north. Drone shot from astern with Tony on the helm. Drone shot circling the boat. Sunset. Cool crew shots. I really like Martin's use of long lenses.Martine explains that no one has slept much because they've had a vew opportunities with clouds. Night shots of them sailing. Scallywag is behind her. Shots of the crew with Scallywag in the distance. Brad talks about having Brunel, Dongfeng, Scallywag, and MAPFRE next to them. Timelapse of the cabin, and then of the cockpit, then the nav station. Nicho: The benefit is lack of sleep. If you enjoy lack of sleep there's a high benefit to being this close to other boats. Drone shot of AkzoNobel and Brunel sailing a hundred yards apart. Shot from the deck of three boats on the horizon. Nicho explains that you can try out mode variations vs. the other boats. In this upwind stuff they haven't been consistently strong, so they need to work that out. "Yeah, we do need to get that sorted."Slomo shots. Sunrise. Liz on the helm. Drone shot of TTToP sailing into a sunbeam. Liz: Doing really well. Winning at the moment, which is really cool. Upwind conditions, it's really gusty. Shots of Liz working the pit during a sail change. Liz: It's good being first, but then it's hard if you fall back. Hopefully learn from that. Lucas: Ups and downs are hard. But need to keep a level head. All a part of the game. Keep chipping away. Liz: Matching boatspeed with everybody, but you can see clouds coming up. And it only takes one or two clouds and you're out the back door. Sometimes you're at the mercy of the wind gods. Hoisting the J1. Dee: Got a big cloud to weather, increased pressure, so we switched from the masthead to the J1. Shot up the slot as they sail under the J1. Bianca: When the lead is changing this early in the leg, you can't get too wrapped up in it. It's awesome to be at the front, and it does make you feel a lot better, but you can't get yourself down when you're at the back. Liz: Couldn't get much more different from last leg to this one. We're in tee shirts, flat water. But the racing's just as intense. Whole fleet together; quite stressful. Drone shot from close overhead.[No description yet]Hoisting the J1 in the sunrise. Antonio at the nav station talks about going through the oil rigs, and need someone at all times watching the AIS. He eats at the nav station. Shot of the burning oil drilling ship. Trystan talks about how they're in last place in the latest sched. Libby talks about picking where to tack onto starboard for the drag race to the equator. Rain on the horizon. Rain astern. Crew working in the cockpit in rain.Rain in the cockpit. Witty in the hatch jokes that the boat should have been designed longer and higher, so it would be more comfortable. Libby talks about tacking. We see the tack. Annemieke: "There's another breeze coming." Slomo stacking. Stacking below. Another tack on deck. Libby at the nav station talks on the PA: "Yeah, that's Akzo on the bow." Ben below: Another tack? J1 going up, with Ben then hauling on the furling line to furl the MH0 (or J0). Parko, below: That was a four-hour frenzy. Plenty of tacks. Plenty of MH0 to J1, and moving all the equjpment. We can see almost everyone in the fleet, so pretty much restarting. Libby: This is racing like people race at their club. Nip and tuck. And we're doing that for 20 odd days at sea. Sunset with clouds.Kyle explains they just went through a fleet of oil rigs. Drone footage of the flaming oil exploration vessel, and flyby of a drilling vessel. Shot of burning flare with MAPFRE sailing beyond them. Kyle explains that TTToP is just behind them, Dongfeng and MAPFRE just to weather. Setting up for next week. Capey and Bouwe at the nav station. Crewmembers sleeping below. Kyle talks about crew sleeping below and coming up to tack. Nina talks, laughing, about being tired (I think; bad wind noise in the audio). Bouwe stands in the cockpit with sunset behind him. Sam: What's the news? Bouwe smiles. Nina says something.Blair, by the stack, talks about how they had a really tough day, with a squally cloud line and lots of tacks. Held onto Brunel, but lost 5 or 6 miles to Dongfeng. And then TTToP and Vestas got through on the other side. But a long way to go... He thinks they're sailing well. Shot of them approaching the oil drilling ship with the flaming flare on the stern. Brunel crossing on starboard a quarter mile behind them. They tack to cover. Shifting the stack. Look at them all max hiking, threaded through the lifelines. Shot of another competitor (Brunel?) to leeward. Light winds. Sail changes. Sunset with Willy grinding.Drone shot of Dongfeng sailing into the sunrise. Slomo of Marie grinding. Kevin on the foredeck gesturing. Looks like their going from J1 to something else. Charles, with a buzz cut: "My haircut has been done by a non-professional as you can see. His name is Black. And he tried to do his best. But unfortunately we do not have the good tools. No one can see my hair until Newport. You can Photoshop it. Horace: One of the other Chinese crew has a big injury. I know it is very disappointing for him not to sail the race. And for the moment all we can do is win this leg and sail well. Drone shot. Jack, in his bunk, talks about Itajai being the longest stopover. Hard to get back into the sleep rhythm on the boat. Not too hot yet. Take it while we can. Charles: Quite complicate situation. Lots of clouds, lots of shift... Were in a good position until this morning. Now the fleet is going in a different direction. Next 24 hours will be key. Rain. Crew working the cockpit in the rain. Slomo of Daryl on the helm. Kevin brings up treats. Drone shot of the sunrise again.Jules: Starting to approach Cabo Frio and there's quite a bit of cloud. Especially this time of day it gets quite active. He and Nicho look at clouds. Brad on the foredeck. Peeling J1 to MH0. Nicho on the helm: Just had a section of clouds, and got a split of Vestas and Turn the Tide on one side of the cloud, and us on the other. So we've had to do a bunch of tacking and stacking... Took a couple of miles out MAPFRE and Brunel. Dongfeng had a nice slot through the clouds, so they've gained. Drone shot with sunset behind AkzoNobel's masthead. Drone shot with sunset and crepuscular rays.Opens with the same drone shots as their last video, of the burning oil ship with TTToP sailing past. Dee: Today we went through a really busy area off the Brazilian coast, where they're researching new oil drilling, including the ship burning off the oil. She talks about how they still use oil, but with plastic use being reduced, the need for oil might be reduced, and then you look at how much money is being spent on oil exploration, and you've gotta think that should be invested in renewable energy. It's gotta be the way forward. So it's really frustrating to see, and you hope that change will happen. Drone shot flying through the smoke plume with TTToP beyond.Drone shot of TTToP sailing past an oil platform, and a drilling ship with a big flare-off putting out a lot of flames and smoke off the stern. Deck-level shot of the drilling ship and flames. Martin, on deck: Day 2, in the middle of the pack. Sailing through this oil field. MAPFRE and Dongfeng to weather. Akzo, Vestas, and Scallywag behind us. Good morning. Got a fair bit to go this way, then tack to the north. Drone shot. Martin: It's fantastic to be back after my knee injury. I've been smiling since I started. Doing quite well at the moment; it makes it easier. Martin talks to Lucas about somthing. Dee: It's really nice to have Martin back. The big concern was that he be fully recovered. But he's had his knee surgery. It's nice that Martin comes from previous winning campaigns. So he knows how to go fast. And having his calm experience in the mix... hoping for an even better result. Slomo of Martin trimming, oil ship with flames behind them.On-screen graphic: Who is Alberto Bolzan? Different crewmembers laugh, make non-answers. Slomo of Alberto trimming. Kyle: good drive, good sailor, very emotional. Mark-rounding footage. Kyle: He hates all freeze-dried food. Footage of Alberto eating. Carlo, in his bunk: whenever we eat pasta he says itn's not real pasta. (We see Alberto complaining about pasta.) Sam asks: What's the secret to surviving the volvo ocean race? Alberto: Talks about focus. Kyle, Bouwe talk about his skills. Bouwe: "Not the tallest guy." Alberto trimming. Alberto below, talks about his hobbies. Shows photos on his phone of paragliding. Talks about his girlfriend, who's a world champion at it. Shows photos of his cat. Talks about flying. It's like sailing with a third dimension. He shows photos of the day before he left Brazil. What he loves about flying is the strategy. Where the thermals are, can make a lot of distance. The world record is 565 km. Shot of Alberto trimming with two other boats visible a mile to leeward. Alberto: I'm really competitive with everythign I do. I can't beat my girlfriend. She's too good. That's the worst part of flying. Drone shot of the bow of Brunel with dolphins swimming in front of them.Time lapse from the stern cam as darkness falls. Simeon, below, talks about the wind dropping and going right. Probably will do the stack and get on the hip of those guys. Below, Martine and Brad stacking. Jules at the nav station. Night shot of stars, moon. Luke, in the dark, explains that they're right on the crossover of the J1 and the Masthead 0, and it's difficult to know if they should change or not, if the better sail will pay for the loss incurred in the sail change. "Where we are in the fleet at the moment we can't afford to make any losses."Pablo, in the cockpit, talks in Spanish about the leg so far. Dongfeng a half mile ahead; rest of the fleet behind. He talks in Spanish about what's coming up in the leg. Then he does it all again in English. In theory it's a leg without too many maneuvers. Will be a lot of cloud activity and stalls, lots of peels. Have to keep their focus if they're going to win this leg. Other boats will be close by. Speed of the boat is key in this kind of leg. You want to gain meter by meter. You get a small advantage, and then you can use that to get in the right position with the clouds. Shot of sunset with fleet close behind them. Rob and Tamara stacking on the foredeck. Rob on the helm with other boats behind them. Dongfeng crossing on starboard a half mile ahead of them. Shifting the stack to leeward in preparation for tacking. We see the tack from the cabin, looking aft. Xabi calling jib trim. Blair and Neti on the bow. Lowering the J1.Horace talks about missing the team after being away. Now he's on board again, so he's happy. Daryl and Carolijn discuss tacking to avoid a cloud. Shifting the stack to leeward. We see the tack with Charles on the helm. Pascal, at the nav station, talks in French. On deck, Charles says that MAPFRE appears to be preparing to tack. Daryl, on the helm: A classic upwind slog. Probably 6 days. Everyone back there. (Gestures aft.) Good mood on board. Kevin talks about the clouds and wind shifting. And about seeing a cargo ship in his face while driving in the night. Drone shots after sunset showing the three competitores sailing (Dongfeng, MAPFRE, and TTToP.)Drone shot of TTToP going up wind with competitors in the distance. Then we see the same shot from deck level with Liz grinding. Bianca trimming. Francesca: I think it was a really good night. Good in-port. Now we are really close to Dongfeng and MAPFRE... we are really close. And at this moment of the race the boats are matching speed. "I think it will be a good fight to Newport." Sunrise. Drone shots. Rain in the cockpit. Light wind; Brunel flopping behind them. Hoisting, deploying the MH0. Dee: "We thought we were in pretty stable conditions, and then..." Squall, rain, all the boats are fighting to deal with it. "Have to sail your boat." Stacking forward. Dee: We've had really good races in legs 6 and 7. Talks about losing the podium in final miles in leg 6. Then finished fourth in leg 7. Want to threaten for the podium. Have had one night at sea, and are still in sight of everybody. And that's how this leg goes. Drone shot of competitors ahead and to leeward. Dee and Nicolas at the nav station. Nicolas explains: they're sailing upwind to Cabo Frio. Then doldrums, reaching in North Atlantic tradewinds, then North Atlantic high. Pretty unpredictable. He talks about strategy. Pretty straightforward in the first part of the leg. Don't want to be too close to the Brazilian coast. Fighting in the middle of the fleet.Stronger wind. Nick coming back from the bow. Stacey grinding. Jena, below, talks about being back on the boat. Team still seems strong, and fighting, and she's happy to be back and excited. A completely different challenge; while she was away she did her 49er campaign. Happy to be surrounded by these guys, because they know a lot, even if I don't tell them. Charlie, in the cockpit, talks about going to the J0. Jena, below: Last time I was in Brazil was in Rio for the 2016 Olympic games. She talks about Brazilian people being helpful and nice. But hot, which she isn't used to. Was glad to see a different part of Brazil than Rio. Jena in the cockpit. Charlie on the helm. Tom grinding. Jena talks about seeing pollution in Rio. But Itajai was completely different. Very clean. People are gathering together to do something about their beaches. "Thank you, Brazil. You're like my second home. I hope to be back soon." Crew gathers the J1 on the foredeck after going to the J0. Charlie on the helm: "I think it's J1 on the other tack." Grinding.Time lapse of the cabin below. Nicolai: We're not going so well this morning. We're reshuffling the weight of the boat. It's quite painful when you're losing. Simeon on the helm; Luke crossing the cockpit in slomo. Emily looks through binoculars at a competitor on their port side. Luke: Have been struggling. Breeze is shifty and up and down. "It's not the easiest sailing, and we haven't been doing it particularly well... Put it down to learning I guess."Dusk. Light winds. Stu on the helm with MAPFRE behind him. Dawn. Stu: Nice to be back on board and sailing again. Interesting night; clouds, rain. Upwind sailing; all the boats close. Settling into routine again. Sometime today we'll tack. Marie chews something. Sunrise. Marie: Stu has been something like 8 times in the Volvo Ocean Race. One of the most experienced. So lots of people call him, "Magic Stu." Good news that he's back with the team. Stu on the helm.Time lapse below of Martine (I think?) getting into her bunk. Simeon at the nav station: Whole fleet is close to each other; 4 or 5 miles. Increase of wind in the night, but very unstable. Pretty busy on deck. Sails on/sails off. At the moment we're making good progress. Probably will tack in the next couple of hours, whenever Jules is happy.Pre start. Libby calls time. Brunel close astern. Witty: We're gonna go under Vestas. They tack right after the start, head to the right side. Trystan calls wind. Close tack under Brunel. Close duck of AkzoNobel. Lowering the J1 with four boats ahead of them. Ben: Always a bit of a frenzy the first lap before going offshore. It's a bit lighter out here than what it was inshore. Just peeled from the J1 to the MH0. Next stop: Newport. Stacking forward. Light conditions.Parade. Witty kisses his wife (girlfriend?) goodbye. Dockout to Beautiful Day. Trystan, in full-face sunscreen, talks about how emotional the turnaround and departure has been. "Forever Fish" arm band. Alex says this is the first time they'll be hoisting the main and all the sails; just going to try to finish as best they can. Closeup of the Forever Fish logo as the main goes up. Libby has a tablet on her waist.Pre-departure schmoozing in the big tent. Parade. Scallywag pulls out. Peter gives them a thumbs up. "Pretty amazing to think what they've been through... see them back on the water." Brunel docks out. Bouwe steering. Bouwe, motoring out: Leg start there's a lot of hanging out, doing things you don't want to do. In the background Kyle chats up the jumper, who's wearing a Brazilian flag on the stern. Gull flying by. Peter talks about how Kyle's nickname is seagull. Start action, mark rounding with A3 deploy with Peter on the helm. Then Bouwe on the helm calls for the A3 furl. Upwind close action. Jumper jumps over. Bouwe: We have to go early, Pete! Screamnig match with TTToP on mark approach. Bouwe: Start was horrible. Good thing is we're on our way. Sweet drone shot making a low-altitude flyby as Brunel sails upwind in light air. More drone shots. Peter, below, shirtless: Didn't get the best start. Kyle: 10 miles offshore. An average start; got into third place by the leaving mark. Nice to be sailing in light air and warm air as well.Something going on below. Nicho: "No, it's loose." (Keel inspection?) Justin talks about how other boats sailed away from them, except for Vestas. Not sure why. Tried everything. "We wait until dark and then we pull our moves out." Sunset. Emily says the start of the leg was quite nice. A bit frustrating, but nice to be back on the water. Drone shot circling AkzoNobel in the sunset.Bowsprit. Helm with sunset in light air. Crew on bow with SiFi laughing with sunset behind them. Mark trimming. All the other boats to leeward.We see the start again. Carolijn calls tactics. I think this must be Carolijn's GoPro/Garmin. (Update: I learned from Alan Block and Matt Knighton on The Boatfeed that this is actually a chest cam.) That's whey we have another view of the start. Cool! "Okay; Pascal: Yours." A3 hoist: "3, 2, 1, hold trim." She calls "port primary", "starboard primary". "I don't know how far to go... I look.... Okay; trim's good Kevin." Gathering in the J1. "I go back."Parade follows Simeon and Nicolai, intercut with starting line shots. Martine kisses her dad good bye. Dockout. Starting line, with Vestas, Dongfeng, and TTToP. Brunel behind them. Scallywag right behind. Scallywag ducks them at a mark rounding. Jumper jumps off. Simeon: I think we had a good plan on the start. But just a few seconds after the start it's such a critical position. Fell back. But recovered well. Middle fleet. Nicolai helmed well. We're rolling Turn the Tide now; we'll keep close to the top to guys so uh- (And then the video cuts off. Um, Brian?)Parade. Goodbyes at the dock. Carolijn's son being bummed. :-( Dockout with Charles on the helm. Jumper talks in Portuguese on the stern. He does a cool jump off the stern pulpit with his one leg. Caolijn talks about how she enjoyed being in Brazil. Charles, on the helm (seems like still before the start) talking about leaving Italjai. Start with countdown. Post start interaction with TTToP. Stu: Horace? We hoist after the tack. They tack ahead of the oncoming starboard tackers. Sailing downwind with MAPFRE just ahead. Gybing with TTToP, Scallywag, and Vestas behind them. More close action.Slomo parade. Dockout. Liz on the helm waving at the shore. Frederico talks about the stopover and the next leg from the foredeck as they motor out. Francesca calls "four minutes" in the cockpit. Start with other boats ahead. Dee driving after the start. First mark rounding; good action on board. Dee: "Nice guys; nice." Lowering the J1. Sailing downwind under A3. Frederico calls for the furl approaching the leward mark. He calls to the boat behind them, "No water! No water!" Henry talks about leaving and heading north for Newport. Did a good in-port section. MAPFRE just ahead. Coming into the first light stuff they've had for an opening of a leg. High drone shot of competitors.Blair, in the prestart, talks about the upcoming leg. Rob calling tactics at the start. Brunel sailing down on them. Sailing away from the line with the best start. Neti: "Dongfeng is tacking." Grinding. Leading the fleet around the weather mark. Dongfeng right on their stern. Lots of cool sailhandling footage. They're doing a good job without Sophie. Neti: Start was pretty good for us... Now comes the tricky part, which is the leg. (He repeats in Spanish.) Rob recaps the start. Learned their mistakes from the in-port race. "A long port tack now and try to stay in front."SiFi at dockout with kid. Parade. Stacey waves from on board as they pull out. Nick on the foredeck. Nick on the bow calling the start. Mark on the helm. Nick on the rail: So pumped to go home. Dongfeng visible behind them. Stacey: Now we're heading up to Newport, RI, home port of Vestas/11th Hour Racing... Hope we get an awesome welcome. Shots of other boats during the windward/leeward. Foredeck. Jumpers going over (two of them).Conversation on shore between two people in MAPFRE shirts who I don't recognize. Shore team? Dockout parade. The same two are there. One has a special flag and a GoPro mounted on his chest. Guessing he's the jumper. Maybe they're both jumpers? Wisom dancing. Onto the dock. We see the dockout from on board. Xabi and the younger jumper exchange flags. Younger jumper puts on a swim cap and goggles, then jumps overboard. Xabi, back on the dock, talks in Spanish.