Leg 4

David Witt talks to the crew in the cockpit. He sounds like the caffeine is really kicking in. "We're gonna have to just take this on, right? I don't know what's gonna happen. We're just gonna have to take this on all night." Alex talks about the routing being different than reality; some big choices on how to route through the Phillippines. Witty talks about Parko saying a smart thing before, you have to think about what SiFi will do on Vestas. He doesn't know where we are, he doesn't know we're still leading. He'll want to say in front of "the Feng". I think he'll want to put himself between them and the finish. Witty: "And I just completely confused myself again." Discussion in the cockpit. Fish-eye shot from the bowsprit looking aft. Witty below at the nav station obsesses over the chart, current, strategy. "About 20 minutes from our final gybe into Hong Kong. Getting close." Stacking below. Witty: "It'll be the greatest yacht race I've ever won if we can pull this off. For a whole bunch of reasons... A smart man told me once that the way you win yacht races is you eliminate the ways to lose them. And we kept coming up with ways to lose it and then fighting back. That's probably what will make it the most special if we can pull it off." Witty on the helm; washing machine. Witty and Libby at the nav station. Witty announces the sched over the PA. Dongfeng is farther back in the latest sched, so he thinks it's a fair bet Vestas (who is in Stealth Mode) is further back, too. Witty: "Our rate of improvement is pretty amazing, really." Talks about the amount of hard work. "You've gotta believe in yourself first if anything's gonna happen."Below, Joan explains that they have just passed the Phillippines, and have about 370 miles to go to the finish. Tricky, because there's a lot of traffic (oh yeah) and they don't always have lights. Sophie on deck: "The most enjoyable part of this leg for me was the start. Was sad to leave home, but it was really cool to go down the bay, and then turn left and go down the coast where I grew up surfing." Willy talks in Spanish. Louis: "There hasn't been a best part of the leg, man. THIS is the best part of the leg, because we're a day from the dock." Támara talks, laughing, in Spanish. Blair talks about the tradewind sailing, that being the highlight. Louis: "The worst part of the leg was when we came out of the doldrums and pretty much were dropped by the entire fleet." Willy talks in Spanish. Sophie: "Some of those days in the doldrums. They were pretty tough." Blair talks about the doldrums. Támara talks in Spanish. Sunset. Gybing with land behind them. Rob, on the helm, smiles. Islands. Drone shots of them sailing past islands.Dark night shots. Bouwe holds onto the line under the boom and looks ahead. Sally sits on the rail with the sunrise behind her. Abby says something I can't quite catch about Turn the Tide. Jens does something involving the hatch on the foredeck. Below, Capey and Bouwe look at the computer at the nav station. Drone shot of Brunel sailing past land (Camiguin in the Phillippines?). Carlo explains that they had a nice surprise when they woke up and had made gains on TTToP. "Exciting." Cool tracking drone shot of Brunel approaching with land behind them, then the drone passes in front of the bow just ahead of the boat. Stacking. Bouwe, on the helm, talks about passing TTToP and hoping that's the last one (pass?). Now just needs to stay between the finish line and their competitor.Drone shot of TTToP triple-heading on port gybe past an island (Camiguin in the Phillippines, maybe?). Someone (I think maybe Annalise?) takes a bearing on the competitor to leeward. In another shot, we see that competitor (Brunel) a few miles away. This is where Brunel made their final pass to take what becomes 5th (after the Vestas retirement). Elodie, on the helm, sounds stressed. "We're not going so well at the moment, so Brunel is gaining on us. Trying to find a good mode, but it's not easy. The pressure is changing quite a bit and the boat feels... not good at the moment." Later, Martin on the helm explains that they're sailing into a light spot so they're going to gybe. Shot of them gybing; shot of Brunel ahead of them. Dee: "Still have the islands ahead to nogotiate... Sort of a freestyle; take it as it happens. Kind of frustrated right now." She looks it.Pretty sunrise drone shot. Martin, on the helm, talks about gybing into the Luzon Strait. Brunel should be somewhere around here. Brian [Johnson] and Dee look at the chart. Dee describes how Brunel is super close to them; just off their quarter. Drone shot. Brian talks about the tricky wind patterns ahead of them and the positions of the boats around them. Dee laughs about Brunel being right there, and how she's tired.Drone shots of vestas. Mark and SiFi looking at the chart at the nav station, talking about strategy vis-a-vis the competitors. SiFi explaisn that they just got a sched, and are working out where to go through the Phillippines. Based on a big righthand shift they're going to go south. Looks like it will help them with Dongfeng. Shot of the sails on deck. Gybe at night from the cabin, looing at the cockpit. Closeup of chart showing their course zigzagging though islands. Red-light shots of stacking on deck. Another night gybe. Mark, on the helm, talks about how they're gybing through the Straits of Luzon and have made a good gain on Dongfeng.Very high drone shot. Jules, on the stern, talks about how they're in stealth mode. Most of those on the boat have done 35 out of the last 40 days at sea. Drone shot flying in toward and then past the boat.Sunrise shot of the stern. Carolijn on the stern. Franck, on the stern, explains where the competitors are. Having to deal with the wind shadow of Taiwan. And will have to deal with the finish into Hong Kong. Kevin on the helm with Horace trimming and Carolijn on the pedestal. She's looking forward to arriving in Hong Kong and seeing her son Kyle. And seeing the rest of the Dongfeng family again. She says a phrase in Cantonese, with a small correction from Horace. Horace talks about how his sailing dreams started in Hong Kong. Met the person who gave him the chance to learn professional sailing, and gave him a chance to join the biggest race in the world. And he thinks his famiily will be there. Will fight until the end. Daryl says he's looking forward to seeing his family in Hong Kong. Jack is looking forward to seeing the team, and his girlfriend. It's a cool place he hasn't been to.Slomo washing machine in the cockpit. Drone shot of TTToP sailing fast. Surfing shots from the drone. Francesca in the cabin: "We need to keep pushing." Bernardo, crouching in the pit, explains that they did well in the last sched, but they're to leeward, so their distance-to-finish hasn't gained as much. But they think the wind will favor them. In the hatch, Francesca talks about how good things are: Sun. "Elodie is driving so we are going fast. The sky is so nice. We have more than 20 knots. It's perfect." Shot of Elodie on the helm. Drone shots of them sailing fast. Bernardo: "We have to push... and see what the outcome of the leg is." Were unlucky crossing the equator with a few clouds. Wake shot.Drone shots of Brunel sailing fast on starboard gybe, including washing-machine shots from the drone, with Yann on the stern. Drone recovery, I think by Bouwe, with Yann in the background at the controls. Sally, on the stern, says it's blowing 20-23 knots. "Trying to get to Hong Kong." Bouwe trimming on the stern. Washing-machine shots of Jens in the cockpit. Abby and Sally sharing some kind of brightly colored candy from a ziploc bag. Below, Bouwe explains that yesterday they made a very good move breaking away from a cloud formation, and made good gains. Hopes they keep the breeze and make even more gains. Very nice sailing conditions right now; 48 hours from the finish. Strategy of how to get around the Phillippines is important.Distant drone shot of AkzoNobel. Drone shot of the cockpit from overhead. Shot of the crew in the cockpit. Simeon, below, sys they're 3 days from Hong Kong, a little less breeze than they wanted. A couple of gybes in the last 48 hours to seek some more pressure to the south, which was unfortunate because they'd committed to the north earlier. Trying to defend against MAPFRE. Drone flyby of an interesting-looking motor vessel, painted white and about 100' long; numbers "BJ4979" painted on the side. It's a tuna longliner; see https://www.wcpfc.int/node/16813. As the drone passes it we see AkzoNobel in the background. In the cockpit, Brad and Nicolai talk. Brad: "What's your favorite movie quote?" Nicolai: "Favorite movie quote?" He thinks. Brad: "I think I know what it is... Yours would be: 'I'm not a smart man. But I know what love is." [Forrest Gump.] Nicolai: "That's a good one." Another drone shot of the fishing boat, showing the crew working in the area forward of the cabin. Brad: "'Are you not entertained?'" [Gladiator.]Vestas gybes from starboard to port. SiFi at the shrouds, looking forward. Back in the cockpit he talks about how it's different leaning the other way. Everyone starting to look for their opportunities. Drone shot from astern as Vestas gybes from port back to starboard. Crash cam/stern cam view at dusk as camera shifts from color to black-and-white mode. Night-vision shot from the cabin of crew working in the cockpit during another gybe. Night-vision shot of the J3 unrolling after the gybe. Spreader cam view looking down at night as a crewmember shines a flashlight upward. SiFi at the nav station. Zoom in on nav software (nice, well-focused screenshot). SiFi and Mark talk about strategy, Dongfeng. SiFi says into a PA microphone, "Okay; we're setting up." [For a gybe, presumably.] Stacking below. Stacking on deck. Spreader cam view at night as they gybe from port to starboard. Mark and SiFi look at other boats on AIS (I think). Another gybe, this one during the early morning light, from starboard to port. TJ, trimming on the stern. "Busy night; couple of gybes. Dongers is back out [from sealth]." Talks about hot showers and hamburgers. Sunrise.Xabi, in the pre-dawn light, talks about the current situation. Have been going well and closed in on the guys in the front. Are waiting for an opportunity to open up, and wold like to get one position back. Scallywag has done an amazing leg. Took their chances in the doldrums. Happy for them if they win. Enjoying the sailing now after the doldrums.Shots of them sailing fast on starboard gybe. Winch, washing machine. Charles smiling on the helm. Carolijn trimming. Below, Frank says, "The plan is a long, downwind, starboard gybe with some wind variation." Sometimes an opportunity to gybe to position the boat for the next shift. When they pass Taiwan there will be a big wind shadow; have to anticipate that. Not easy to attack the boats in front. They have better wind. Shots of a gybe from starboard to port, then another gybe from port to starboard. Crew working in the cockpit.On deck, Pablo talks in Spanish about the remainder of the leg, the other boats. Below, Blair and Joan eat. Shot of the bow as they triple-head on port gybe. Blair trims. Drone shot from astern, from alongside, circling the boat with the sunrise behind them, from above.Frederico, trimming, explains that they just gybed because they got an unexpected header, so they're now on course but on port insted of starboard. Liz steers. Drone shot with rain in the distance. Dee: "Let's make this cloud our friend and stays with it." Dee discusses strategy and nearby boats. "We're in really light airs and just need a bit more oomph, really."VR 360-degree shot FROM THE DRONE. [Go Sam.] Includes actual drone audio. Drone's view of launch, tracking above AkzoNobel, recovery.Drone shot of Scallywag bouncing while triple-heading on starboard. Nav station shot of nav software with clouds. Libby talks about the wind dropping to 7 knots, but they know there is a line of wind ahead. High drone shot of Scallywag running in lighter conditions under cloudy skies; possible rain in the distance. Libby: "It's all good, because we were getting a little bit twitched about no breeze; there was a little bit of drama. [She mimes: 'Aaaaahhhh!'] But... it's here." View from the stern of spray, washing machine. Witty, below, talks about if they can do 3 more scheds today without a loss... Talks about the bad seaway, pushing hard with up to 35 knots. "One sched down, got three to go. If we can get through the next three scheds without a loss, there won't be enough runway left for them to catch us." Talks about sending it - but not breaking it. Drone shot of bad seaway. Luke: "You pick your times to push, and we pushed pretty hard last night." Annemieke: "It's so nice to have four people on deck, because we can really send it now." Compares it to the Southern Ocean, with only three people on deck. "The retrieval of Alex was one of the highlights. I'm so proud of how quickly we got him back." Morale is really high. "I think we're a pretty happy team at the moment."GoPro view as Brian [Carlin] releases a drone on the stern. Drone shots of pulling away from Brian, then circling TTToP, triple-heading on port gybe. GoPro view of drone retrieval. Brian: "Yeah. There we go."Yann, below, explains that he's going to try to fly the drone, even though there's a bit of water on deck and it's pretty windy (about 18-20 knots). There's a reef to windward, and he's going to try to get the reef in the drone shots. (Not sure who's videoing this, but you can see their shadow in the shot.) He's getting everything ready there, then he'll give the drone to Jens, who will take the drone to the stern and launch it. Yann stands in the hatchway, being filmed as he talks to someone on the stern. "Whenever you think it looks okay you come and pick it up, with the camera looking... this side [he gestures toward the stern] so that it doesn't get any spray on the lens." Jens comes and takes the drone; carries it aft through the cockpit. From the mast cam we see him take it onto the stern. Then we see Yann's GoPro (really Garmin) head-mounted camera view as he walks toward the stern with the drone controls. We get a shot over Yann's shoulder as he talks to Jens. We see the drone launched, then see the launch again in slomo, then see the drone's view as Jens releases it and salutes it as it flies away. We see the GoPro (Yann-cam) view of the person videoing him, who I think might be Kyle? Yann: "Now it's just a matter of doing some, uh, nice picture... Shouldn't be too dangerous if I don't get too close to the boat." Shots of Yann on the stern operating the drone controls. Drone shots circling the boat. Yann: "We can maybe stop for a while, saving the battery for landing... I don't see it [the reef]... Where is it?... Now I'm making pictures, actually... Sally [who's driving], if you feel you are going in a big surf you tell me before?" Cool drone shot from just ahead of the bowsprit. Drone view as it approaches them from astern. "Okay Jens... A bit more to leeward if you can." Jens, with goggles and a protective glove, catches the drone. Slomo shot of Jens catching the drone, then a mastcam view of the same thing. Below, Yann debriefs: "Just finished with this little drone flight in the morning. We did not see the reef, but we got some nice pictures, so it was not for nothing. It was worth it."Sunrise shot of the stern. Below, Witty and Libby are at the nav station. Libby: "As much as we had the cloud of doom three or four days ago, in hindsight it probably turns out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise. Because it gave us a more westerly approach to the following clouds; it gave us this lane." Grant sits next to her, holds up three fingers: "Only three Sidney-Hobart races to go to the finish." On deck, Luke steers with the sunrise behind him. "Every sched that they don't gain it makes it harder for them to catch us... It's all up to everyone on board now to execute as a group." Below, Trystan eats with Luke behind him also eating. Trystan talks about how they can't relax, because everyone is so quick behind, still a lot of choices to be made. Grant, on the helm: "Cha-ching!" He explains that Witty (standing behind him) has a deal where when they can hit 20 knots of boatspeed on course, they get a payout, $100. "Problem is the steering's a little too accurate lately, it's gonna cost him a fortune." Witty talks about how they've had emails from supporters and sponsors, and expectations are super high. Talks about the level of stress with 1,400 miles to go. Not wanting to let down the people who put them there.Wraparound VR views: Stern, with Witty (I think) on the helm. Low-angle shot of the stern with three crew: driver, trimmer, and grinder. Shot from the pit looking aft. They have a reef in the main. Washing machine.Wraparound VR views: Below. Dee sits by the galley. Brian [Carlin] works at the media station, editing a video. Someone lies in her bunk, looking at a mobile device. Nav station showing chart software. Brian in the media station again. VR GoPro view from a camera mounted on Liz on the bow.Mark, in the cockpit, explians that they're going through a current line south of Guam, and there's an "unbelievable" amount of floating debris. Shots of them bouncing along. Shot of the mainsail bouncing as they hit chop. Below, Phil talks from his bunk, eyeshades pushed up on his forehead. "Not ideal for sleeping. It's bloody uncomfortable. Feels like we're doing about 5 knots and just slamming up and down." He calls to SiFi and Mark, who are looking at the latest sched. "How'd we go?" SiFi: "Reasonably quick but very high." Nick, on deck: "Sea state is very confused right now... Pretty scary looking at the rig sometimes." Mark, by the wheel, reports on the latest sched to Nick, Tony, and Stacey. "We were higher and slower than Dongers, and higher and faster than Akzo." SiFi, below: "Sea states's been pretty horrendous." He talks about some lighter winds ahead, and trying to figure it all out. Shots of the weather models on the computer.Awesome sunset drone shot with Dongfeng launching off a wave with the front half of the hull out of the water. More drone shots.Sunrise washing-machine shot on deck. Below, Abby does boat-captain stuff: bailing (?), inspecting things. "So, we're right in the back of the boat, checking for water." Pretty dry, she says. Giving a once-over to the hydraulics and other systems. "Part of the routine is preventative maintenance." On deck, she explains the boat captain role: Doing checks on the boat, wear and tear, systems maintenance. She tries to do it when she's on-watch, but sometimes she has to do it in the off watch. She puts on her foulies. She explains the watch system: 9 people on board, navigator is out of the rotation, so everyone does 4 on 4 off, staggered so someone comes on every 2 hours. She climbs into her bunk. Back on deck, she talks about calling all hands .Shots of her driving in the washing machine, grinding, slomo of her getting doused in the pit. She says it generally ends up that she cooks the meals, and keeps up with the food bags. Shot of her prepping a meal in the galley. "It's pretty non-stop... Never a dull moment." On the helm, she talks about how nice the conditions are. They're on-schedule, so no need to ration food or fuel. Talks about how they smell like they've been at sea for two weeks. Talks about how nice it is to get out of the doldrums and doing tradewind sailing.On deck, Xabi talks in Spanish. Sunrise shots; Rob steering, Sophie brushing her teeth on the stern. Támara grinding, Louis trimming.Drone shots from various angles of TTToP surfing.Hannah comes below, sprays fresh water on her face. "Before this the longest I'd been on a boat was 9 days, on a Trans-Atlantic. This is day 14, a little bit longer, and we've got 5 days to go." She talks about liking routine, not having too many off-watch maneuvers to do. Misses washing her hair; a proper shower. Enjoying the experience of seeing this part of the world. On deck, mark, on the mainsheet, talks about being midway in the race, and the points are starting to separate. Trying to podium, put some points on MAPFRE and Dongfeng. "Definitely mindful of where the two red boats are." A 1500-mile drag race to the Phillippines. Phil talks about how nice it is sailing fast with the wind aft. "If the whole race was like this it'd be the best race in the world." He thinks Mark and SiFi have put the boat in a good spot. Scallywag has done well; still have time to mow them down. And beat the two red boats. Drone shots of Vestas sailing toward the sunset, surfing in 20 knots of wind. Drone shots as the boat's doing the washing-machine thing, which is unusual: I wonder where Amory is with the drone controls.Blair in the cockpit, and then grinding for Sophie, talks about sailing through the Caroline Islands, the competition, needing to make gains on the boats in front. Going to be tough to catch them. Looking forward to another sched. Talks about where the other boats are. Rob, on the mainsheet on the stern, talks about the other boats. He's happy about Scallywag because his sister is navigating for them, and also because they'd rather the bonus point for the leg go to Scallywag rather than to anyone else. Blair, holding a tablet by the helm, goes over the latest sched with Pablo, who's steering. Slomo washing machine shots of Xabi, Pablo. Night shots from the bowcam of someone working on the foredeck, then of the cockpit. Washing machine shots of Blair on the helm. Drone shots of MAPFRE triple-heading in 20 knots of wind.Horace, below with Carolijn, talks about teaching her Cantonese. They take turns speaking Cantonese. It's kind of adorable.Closeup of chart software. Slomo of Bernardo on deck. Bernardo, below, summarizes their position. Talks about how all the gear makes them sweat a lot. Liz works on the watermaker pump, explaining what she's doing. Brian [Carlin]: "You would have made a good dentist." Dee talks about how Liz is very good at fixing boats, but doesn't have the empathy to work on humans. Shots of Liz soldering on the watermaker pump. "It's in, it's installed, it's working. We're gonna make some water to celebrate. It's like champagne. But it's water instead."Horace, standing on the stern as they sail fast on starboard, talks in Mandarin (I assume). He gives a thumbs up. Shot of him steering, then trimming.John talks about their comeback. "It is more positive not being off the back, for sure. But it can change." "Hong Kong is hometown for the skipper. It's also the hometown for a major backer... So for us to get a good result... it would be everything." Drong shot. Shot of routing software on the computer. Grant says the leaderboard shows them dropping back from first into second, but it's only by .6 mile, and the guys they're looking at are 70 miles north of them. "So they're only ahead on paper." Shot of Libby and Witty looking at the computer. Grant: "Thing that helped us a bit more is the model wasn't quite reality." Being north was not as big an advantage as it was supposed to. Couple of islands they have to miss, but in pretty good shape. "Pretty happy to be here. Better this end of the fleet than the other."High drone shot of Scallywag sailing fast, triple-heading on starboard. Slomo washing machine. Grant, trimming in the cockpit: "When David Witt says to me, 'Come and sail the Volvo 65 with me', I said, 'Oh, that sounds like fun. Are they very wet?' He said, 'A little bit.' 'Are you sure?' He said, 'Wetter than anything you've ever sailed in your life.'" Slomo washing machine shots in the cockpit. Ben on the helm. Drone shots.Mark, in the cockpit, talks about how there are a bunch of little Micronesian atolls in front of them, and they're just not laying it so they're going to gybe onto port for a bit. "Should see Dongfeng." Shifting the stack with the island visible ahead of them. We see the gybe from the pit area. TJ points out where the island is, talks about spearfishing. We see the computer chart showing the atoll. Shifting the nav station to port. SiFi points things out on the chart. Stacking back to starboard. Another gybe. Drone shots of them sailing past an atoll, then circling them to show the sunset. Tony, on the helm, talks about how nice it is to get past the doldrums, and see the land, and a reef. Site of a sunken Japanese fleet. Heading toward the north end of the Phillippines. Talks about Scallywag coming through from nowhere. Drone shot from close ahead, cricling behind them with audio pulled down to mimic diegetic drone audio; island visible behind them.Crash cam / stern cam footage of Pablo, trimming, slipping from the high side of the cockpit all the way to the winch on the leeward side. Amusingly, he gathers in the sheet he's trimming over his head the whole way, so it never actually slips on the winch. We see the same fall from the perspective of Ugo's hand-held camera in the companionway, and then zoom in on someone (Xabi?) giving a thumbs up from the mainsheet near the helm and calling out, "Trim on!" Blair puts sunscreen on in the cockpit, his sunglasses pushed up on his forehead as water cascades over the deck. "Plenty of mayonnaise" (?). "Fuck it feels good to be boosting again! Later, doldrums!" A wave comes over and douses him, knocking his sunglasses off his head. He scampers to the stern to retrieve them before they can wash out the open cockpit. Shot of Sophie climbing out on the outrigger to tighten the J0 leech cord. Slomo of her working her way back through the cockpit in the washing machine. Támara gets spray in the face. Someone (Louis?) goes up the mast to the masthead with a GoPro camera (which I now know, due to The Boat Feed, is actually a Garmin, but I'm going to keep calling it GoPro here for consistency).Daryl on the helm in 20 knots of wind. Carolijn and Horace grinding. Charles clinging to the stern with rain beyond him. Washing machine. Horace makes the "No. 1" sign. Wake. Slomos: horace taking spray on the pedestal. Kevin on the bow moving a furled sail. Stacking. grinding.High-speed sailing on starboard gybe. Washing machine; slomo of Frederico shaking water out of his hair, Bleddyn coiling. Liz on the helm. Whooping and laughing.SiFi and Mark at the nav station talk about their course, routing, sched. Mark: "It's such a bummer because we did such great work on those guys for days. Had them in our pocket." They talk about how they can't crack off to the west too far. SiFi: "But when we've got the pressure to go down we take it down." Mark, on deck, talks to Nick: "They just completely cut the corner." Mark talks to Amory about how it's been a challenge, and he's learned a lot from SiFi. Keeping in touch with Charlie, who's trying to learn what he can from the information you get on land. His family is doing better, which is great. He's going to be on the dock in Hong Kong when they arrive. He's emailed them a few times with encouraging words. Patriot scores. "We haven't missed Charlie's hair, that's for sure. [Laughs] ... We've had a good thing going for a long time. It'll be really good to have him back for the next leg." Shot of them sailing on starboard gybe; sunset to port.Rob, on the wheel, sails in about 10 knots of wind on starboard gybe. "It's been difficult. It's certainly been the hardest doldrums crossing I've ever been involved with." Blair talks about 4 or 5 days since the Solomons. "Not much fun at all." Támara talks in Spanish. Sophie talks about how frustrating it has been, how long it has been. Blair doesn't want to say they're out, because that's come back to bite them before. Rob talks about the 3 boats to the east popping out into the tradewinds and making big gains. Blair reads the sched from a tablet. Shakes his head. "Don't look at that anymore." Pablo talks about the competition in Spanish. Xabi: "It's quite painful to be where we are. Especially when a few days ago we were within a mile of the leaders." Have to fight hard now to get back into position. Pablo talks some more about the competition in Spanish. Sophie and Willy grinding; Sophie on the foredeck as they hoist an inside headsail with a rainbow in front of them. Drone shots of them triple-heading in front of the sunset.Nicolai, on deck: "You are going to have good and bad days when you do the Volvo Ocean Race, and you're more likely to have more bad days than good days. Today for example is a bad day; we just lost 4 miles to Dongfeng in a couple of hours, and we don't really have the answers to it. So frustration goes up, people get frustrated, tired, they're exhausted already, and you've gotta be able to deal with that. And that just comes down to good leadership, good management of the team, and everyone getting back into their positing and their roles, and just doing their job, and not trying to get into each other and getting emotional about it... keep the ups and downs away... Tomorrow we might gain for miles... Just flatline the emotional part of it." Below, Simeon talks about Dongfeng being 4 miles ahead. "And the next guys coming on watch are like, what happened?" On deck, Brad looks tense. "It's not like it's the end of the world. Still a week out." Luke, on the wheel: Talks about being happy the rest of the fleet is tucked away. Nicolai talks about having three not-so-good legs, so the pressure is on. Need to deliver results. "You can never regret putting in 100%, and that's what we're doing right now."Rome points out MAPFRE on the horizon. Bouwe steers in the dusk. They sail in the darkness in light wind. Sunrise astern. Very low-altitude drone shot overtaking them on a glassy sea. Drone shot circling them high overhead. Flopping in the morning sun. Jens points out more breeze ahead. Sailing in a building wind. Shot of the plot. Bouwe explains that a big rain cloud appeared, and they kept going in the same direction, while the two nearby boats put up a jib and sailed higher. And then Brunel parked up under the cloud, and the two boats behind saw that on AIS, and the two boats (especially MAPFRE) made a lot of distance on them by pointing higher. Now TTToP is just to leeward of them. "Just a matter of keep pushing hard and never give up. The race isn't over until the finish" (he says through slightly clenched teeth).Franck, at the nav station, looks at routing software and talks in French; I caught "Vestas." He talks about it over his shoulder to Jack (?) in the bunk behind him. Then he talks to Charles. On deck, Charles talks about how they have just taken the lead, or are in the same position as Scallywag, "but we prefer our position for the future. We should be the boat with the most wind for the next few hours." Hopes to have left the doldrums and to be the first to catch the tradewinds. A booby flies over the masthead.Dee, on deck, talks about how she went to a dark place (due to their being left behind by 4 other boats, I assume), but she didn't show it outwardly. "If I came up on deck swearing and miserable and head down, then everyone would go down rapidly. So I went to my bunk for a little while... You have to look at, what can you do? If you're just miseralbe about it it doesn't help you go aster. We've got 90 miles to find; that's one bad cloud for them, one good cloud for us, and we've got 2,900 miles to go. There's a lot of sailing left... We thought we'd be fighting at the front, and now we're fighting at hte back." Bernardo talks about trying to improve all the time, working with the team. Elodie talks about trying. Bleddyn talks about how it's good that they have two boats close to them, and just keep pushing. Dee talks about leading by example, and how everyone has come around in their own way.Drone shot of Scallywag against the late afternoon sun shimmer. Ben sits on the foredeck. "We've lost contact with all the boats we found the other night. And we're a fair few miles behind, which is a bit shit." Still in the doldrums, though, so there's always a possibility, he says. Talks about working hard and getting close, and then you "have a bit of a whoopsie"... Below, Alex eats and talks about the competition. Shot of the wind map. Alex talks about Libby's predictions, chances of making gains in the approach to Hong Kong harbor. "It's not bad, Thai green curry." Drone shot. On the helm, Ben talks about how King Neptune was a bit ill during the equator crossing in the Atlantic, so he's had a bit of a holiday, and is going to make an appearance here. Grant emerges from the cabin as Neptune. (Not gonna win any Best Costume Design Oscar for this one. It's a... sheet wrapped around him? And an unadorned boathook as a trident?) Looks like the victims are Annemieke, John, Alex, and Trystan. "Where are the children of the South?" Neptune sprinkles water on people. "Do you wanna be welcomed to the North?" They mumble "yes" in reply. Witty walks by with spray-on hair color and sprays them. Then he throws a disgusting bucket of something on them. Annemieke explains that Neptune has made sure they are safe in the Northern Hemisphere. Shot of the bow-tie pasta in the green slime on the cockpit sole. Alex, covered in goo, says, "No more bad juju. It's done. We're good... We're gonna clear every cloud now and win the race." Below, Grant and Witty at the chart table pull up the sched. Grant does musical accompaniment. Witty: "Sun Hung Kai leading." Grant: "Hey!" Alex, on deck: "Hopefully we can hold our position here. But it's still only 6 knots of wind, so... still some clouds around." Shot of the sunset. Alex: "...and you can go from a rooster to a feather duster in the space of a sched." Alex says there's 7 days to Hong Kong, and they're back in the fight again, so that's good. Sunset with John on the helm.Martin and Frederico lay out and look at the damage to their J1; apparently it was ripped in a squall the day before. Martin: "There are two battens that are gone, and the pockets are also gone. We've got a big rip in one of them. It's going to require a lot of work." We see crash cam footage of the squall from the night before. Martin and Frederico consider the work that's needed. Frederico: "I don't know. It seems pretty bad." Martin: "I think this is a good opportunity..." Frederico (chuckling): "...to pass the torch." [Maybe they're talking about swapping it out for a replacement J1 at the next stopover?] Brian [Carlin]: "Do you think it's fixable?" Frederico: "Yeah, but here... maybe not." He shows the ripped batten pocket.Oy. Dee and Liz as Neptune prod Bernardo, who's in his bunk, with a trident. Dee: "Let's go, pollywog." On deck Bernardo seems legitimately groggy. He and Bleddyn are herded forward and strapped to the weather daggerboard. Liz: "We've got similar reasons for punishment. One, you're a little too beautiful. And two, we have public displays of nudity. Don't do that!" (poke, poke) She takes a pair of scissors. "What do you want: the eyebrows or the hair?" Bleddyn chooses hair. Bernardo takes the set-aside trident and prods at Liz; Dee intervenes and takes it. "I shall prod them from a distance." Liz cuts a reverse mohawk into Bleddyn, then Bernardo. They put red hair dye in their eyebrows. Bernardo: "Freddy? Come and dance for us. Come and dance for us." Frederico does a quick dance in the cockpit. Bernardo: "This is not fair." It's over, thank god.Sunrise. Vestas sails toward a raincloud. Nick, trimming the headsail: "We are coming into a cloud line; the morning rollcall of clouds." He points back to where AkzoNobel and Dongfeng have been closing in on them. Radar screen showing clouds, and with what I assume are the AIS positions of two boats to their southwest, 2 and 4 miles away, respectively. Shot of AkzoNobel and Dongfeng a few miles away. Nick and someone (Tom?) in the cockpit in the rain. At the nav station, Mark talks about how they're stuck in a cloud with no wind, while AkzoNobel, a mile away, is doing 11 knots. "Pretty annoying. Build up a nice lead on them overnight, and it's evaporating very quickly... Let's go." Shot of Akzo in the rain. Shot of routing software. Drone shot of Vestas bouncing with no wind in leftover chop. Someone on the foredeck. Shot of the mainsail looking up, with Stacey standing next to it. SiFi at the nav station, looking at what I think must be the 2018.01.12 01:00 UTC sched, in which MAPFRE had surged north well to the west of them. "Wow." He eats. Amory: "Brutal." SiFi, as he eats: "They probably got in the western edge of this. But they're only in 3 knots [of wind]. So they've gotta deal with the wake [?] as well. The hope is that we break out of this first." SiFi comes up on deck: "Yeah. As scary as we thought it would be." Tony: "Those guys sailed around?" SiFi: "They're due west of us, about 26 miles. They're only in 3 knots, but they are in an easterly." They peel to the MH0. Hannah sits on the lowered J1, tying it with sail ties. "Just put themasthead back up, and got breeze from closer to the direction we're looking for." SiFi: "Pretty painful morning. A cloud moved through last night and decimated the wind field... Filling in now. Got 8 knots of breeze from 060. And it's northeasternly, which is the future. And actually it's gonna continue lifting." As the wind builds we see them unfurling the J3 to double-head with the MH0. Wake shot with them moving at 10 knots.Rain pounds down with light winds. Carolijn in the rain. Franck, and everyone else, looks off to port. Franck talks in French. Camera pans forward to show a rainstorm; ahead of it is a competitor several miles away (probably AkzoNobel, but possibly Vestas). They tack the MH0. More rain. Shifting the stack in the rain. Sailing on port tack with the MH0 after the rain has stopped. Horace, on the bow with no wind, gives a recap. [Interesting that no headsail is visible forward of him. J1 is on deck, and the sail on the bowsprit appears to be furled. Are they bare-headed? using the J2 or J3 as a windseeker? Oh; I bet that's the MH0 on the bowsprit, and it's partially furled to make it a little windseeker, with the unfurled part invisible above him, out of the frame.] At one point a competitor is visible, out of focus, behind him. Again, probably AkzoNobel. Justine, on the bow, recaps the strategic situation. Closer to AkzoNobel, but Vestas, sadly, is a little further ahead. Shot of AkzoNobel. Sailing at 8 knots with dolphins under the bow. Then, flopping again. Franck, in the companionway, talks about strategy in the doldrums; picking the right side of the cloud, getting the wind. Now wind is down, but he's hoping to get into the tradewinds tomorrow morning. Carolijn steering at sunset. Jack sleeping in the bow. Dusk. Horace asks about Vestas' wind in the latest sched, the other competitors; Franck explains.Joan, in the cockpit, talks in Spanish as MAPFRE flops with no wind under cloudy skies. Rain; slomo of Sophie, Joan, Xabi grinding in the rain. Sophie and Támara on the bow in the rain. Moving fast in the squall, and... becalmed again. Crew looks for wind; Xabi discusses it. Blair hauls the clew aft.Kyle pours food into a container in the galley. Whiteboard on the bulkhead above reads: "B/FAST PORRIDGE OR CEREAL". Oh, crap. It's going in a container labeled "Not for eating." I honestly hate this bit. Abby works on a cardboard crown. On the stern pedestal, Sam grins, knowing what's coming. Kyle emerges from the cabin with crown and trident. King Neptune does the bit: "Sam Newton! You're here to be punished for your heinous crimes." They throw the gross food on him. Rome gives him a crosswise reverse Mohawk. Sam is a good sport about it.On the bow, Xabi talks in Spanish. "Mucho calor." At night, we see a light shining forward from the cockpit toward the sail and hear a sheet being eased. Looks like a squall. Trimming, grinding, lightning. Stacking. Lowering the J1.We see the position readout tick over from S hemisphere to N. [Oh god. Here it comes. Please may the hazing ritual be merely silly, rather than cringe-worthy. (J/k. I know it will be fine. Goofball Boat Mom and Her Trusty Wisdom-Voicing Sidekick don't do abusive hazing.)] Sitting on the stack forward in the morning light, Bernardo says it's done; off the bucket list. Bleddyn looks at him: "One part of it, mate." Brian, in the cockpit, talks about how they've stuck within 2 miles of MAPFRE all day and all night. Slomo shot of MAPFRE. Time lapse sequence from a camera mounted on the starboard side of the stern showing them approaching a big squall, rain falling on them. Brian talks about the big squall in front, and the satellite showing a light patch of wind. Slomo of people grinding in the rain. Dee talks about the pollywogs, and how Neptune doused them with a rain shower. "And strangulation!" as Liz throws a sheet around her neck and mock-tugs on it. Liz points forward: "Neptune is pretty angry. And prolonging it. And Neptune hates waiting." Bernardo grins at the camera. "I'm terrified!" Francesca, on the middle pedestal: "Save the eyebrows!"Darkness and the sound of flopping sails. On deck at night, Jules is in the foreground, his face illuminated by the light from a tablet. Behind him the railing by the helm is lit by red light. Jules: "The only problem at the moment this way is that no one's actually moving." Nicho: "We can still do our five minutes heading north." Jules: "On starboard." Nicho: "Before running into where MAPFRE is." They discuss that MAPFRE and Dongfeng have stopped. [Guys: I've seen the future. There's a huge windless cloud ahead.] Nicho: "But at least we'll be heading north until we stop." Simeon and Cécile grind on the pedestal. Stars overhead; the main pops over as they tack to starboard. Below, at the nav station, Nicho points out the changed positions on the chart: They've pulled ahead of Dongfeng and MAPFRE, while Vestas further west has made up ground. "Just from one cloud." Another 500, 600 miles of this, he says. Low-altitude drone shot of AkzoNobel drifting on a glassy sea. Martine throws something small down the forward hatch. Crew sits on sails on the bow. Below, Brad says to Nicolai: "Nicolai, you still awake?" Nicolai: "Yeah. Too warm to sleep. Just watching a bit of Netflix." They have a little scripted chitchat. Jules calls down the hatch that they want to do a peel to the J1, and they need some big strong muscle-y men. Shot of the instruments on the mast: Boatspeed: 0.93. High-altitude time-lapse drone shot of AkzoNobel drifting along. Nicho talks about the "good guys" generally doing okay in the doldrums. Nicolai pulls the main. Very-high-altitude drone shot showing them parked. Pretty slomo shot of their branding reflected in the water. Luke, on the helm, talks about the mood: concerned. Need to come out of the doldrums okay so the front bunch gets a jump. Low-altitude drone shot at sunset with another boat beyond them. I think it's probably Vestas.Sunrise as TTToP sails slowly (but moving) on port tack. Dee stands in the cockpit to report on the latest sched. "We haven't fallen out the back. But we've lost touch with those [gesturing forward]. Need to claw our way back." Later, we see Dee sitting next to Liz on the stack. Dee has her feet on the weather daggerboard. "17 miles at 010." Sounds like that's the distance to Vestas, the leader in the sched at 2018.01.10 23:05:49 UTC. Francesca: "Scallywag and Bruel behind. So, it could be worse after the cloud problems of yesterday. Of course it could be better... MAPFRE's really close. They are pushing, they are going really fast right now." Annalise looks at MAPFRE through binoculars. "61, 62." [bearing, I assume.] Shot of MAPFRE. Bleddyn talks about all the plastic in the ocean. "Crazy. Plastic everywhere." Drone shot with sunset.Opens with a shot of the boat moving, yay! Shot of the keel. Mark talks about their "totally crazy" night last night. Splits in the fleet, reconvergence. Shots at night of Dongfeng super closer to them. Dongfeng's running lights, sail tapes, silhouetted by a lightning flash. Crew in the cockpit working in red light, illuminated by lightning. Best thing, he says, is they came out ahead, and now they're moving at 12 knots. Looking forward to the NE tradewinds. Stacey talks about how they got showers in the rain last night, and now it's super hot again. In the midst of it, Tony, on the helm, asks her to traveller down; she does it as she continues talking. Interesting that they're trimming the main via traveller from the starboard forward cockpit winch; mainsheet appears to be cleated off. Then we see Nick trimming the headsail; Tony on the helm says, "Stand by for puff. 3, 2, 1, [something]." Nick eases the sheet. "Good puff." (Or maybe "Good pop"? Not sure.) Below, at the nav station, SiFi says they're at 3 degrees south. Slowly making their way through the doldrums. Now in a much more stable breeze of 6-8 knots. Probably another 24 hours of slow going; another night of looking out for clouds. "Wanna make sure we're on our toes." They came out on the good side of it last night, but want to make sure they don't do the opposite tonight. In the cockpit at sunset SiFi gives an update. Phil comes through the hatch, shirtless to show his tattoos, including a full left-arm sleeve and some writing I can't make out on his left side. "News is not good." [Joking? Then he continues to the stern to use the head, I'm assuming.] Mark: "We've got one more night." Phil sings, "One more night!... What song is that?" Martin (I think?) answers: "Phil Collins."Opens with a view of the mast instruments: Boatspeed 12.8 knots, woo! Looks like this is early evening. Drone shot from slightly earlier with sunset. Horace gives Carolijn Chinese lessons in the cockpit; says he's going to teach her some Cantonese words for Hong Kong. Carolijn: "I like learning languages. I already speak 6 languages, and I'm trying to learn a 7th language, Chinese Mandarin." She talks about cultural differences. Hates being somewhere and not being able to communicate. "There's always something to learn." Sunset clouds.Crash cam/stern cam night shot. Boat gybes (or I guess the wind suddenly changes direction) such that the MH0 backs from the port side and they lie over with the keel on the wrong side. Bouwe: "Furl, furl, furl!" "I don't have any runner; I've gotta get the keel up." It's a little frustrating that Yann cuts off the crash-cam footage as soon as he does to go to Rome, the next day, describing what happened. "When you're going that fast and you have big sails up it's hard to keep up with it." More of the stern cam footage. Sally, the next day, explains that they came out of it okay, but lost a lot of distance in the process. Night shots with lightning flashes. Rome: "We were pretty close to MAPFRE and AkzoNobel, and we kinda were on the wrong side of that cloud. The other guys got the best of it, but that's part of sailboat racing, I guess." More night shots. Sally describes how they could see the other boats gaining on AIS, but there wasn't really anything they could do based on their position. Night shots of showering in the squall. Rome and Sally recap that, including the tight space in the optimum shower area under the boom.Annalise stands on the bow with a glassy sea and clouds around her. Shot of raincloud behind them. Frederico points to port. "We have a twister. It's somehing new for me as well. And this one is connecting to the water already. It's not as big as the other one we have, but it might have a lot of breeze... Wait and see." Shot of the funnel cloud. Rain falling; crew rushes into the cockpit to shower. "Give us some soap!" Francesca, on the helm: "Main on. Someone!" Dee interrupts washing her hair to grind. Slomo of Martin grinding, grinning at Dee. Shots of dolphins under the bow. Dee, sitting in the forward hatch, points out where the different boats are. "It's the first time we've been clear north of everyone."In the morning light, Ben stands on the boom to look through binoculars ahead of them. Ben: "We've seen a sailing boat with a square-topped mainsail and a masthead sail, so we think it might be one of the other Volvos." Have been following them in the sched, and now have seen them in real life. Below, Libby calls out the latest sched. Sounds pretty happy. "Spotted Brunel about 40 minutes ago off our windward bow." Crew eats breakfast on the bow, talking about it. Witty: "One or two days ago we were a hundred miles behind the leaders." Ben: "We had to fucking work pretty hard the last two days." John talks about how they've worked hard, so to get where they can actually see and identify a yacht is cool. Witty talks about not giving up, keeping trying. "It's a really important leg for us. It would be catastrophic to come in last." Night shots of lightning. Witty on a PA tells the crew about Brunel being 9 miles away on AIS. "We're winning the sched for the first time, so well done lads." Talks about a rain cloud. "We've got this rain cloud which looks [BLEEP] horrendous." Beautiful shot of the waning gibbous moon rising through clouds behind the helmsman, silhouetting him. Next day, Witty talks on deck sounding despondent about getting stuck in the rain cloud with no wind. We see Libby at the nav station with Grant looking at Expedition's "Strip Chart" display. Libby: "True wind angle's at 120 here." Grant [pointing]: "So all this is starboard gybe..." Witty talks about losing 50 miles when they got stuck in the cloud and the other boats didn't. "probably lost 10 of the 30 miles there, and then we lost 20 of the 30 miles sailing 170 degrees off course... "We just did one of the stupidest things ever and now we're 30 miles behind running last again... We're the ones letting ourselves down. It's not bad luck; we're just being idiots. And we deserve to be here at the moment. And I'm just concerned that you don't get too many chances in this quality fleet to go from 30 miles behind or 100 miles behind to back in the lead. Somehow we've got 3,000 miles to figure out how we're going to do it. Again." He and Grant sit on the bow discussing it.High drone shot showing Dongfeng in the foreground and AkzoNobel in the background. It's a pretty distant shot, and makes me wonder: The OBRs haven't been using this opportunity to get drone closeups of their competitors (which they did, a little, in Leg 2). I bet there was some kind of agreement to limit that, presumably for competitive reasons (i.e., an extension of the "OBR shall not contribute to the racing" concept, such that they shouldn't be potentially helping their crew steal info about setup on the other boats). Anyway, Sam's voice is lapped over the shot: "Nicho, tell me about the art of sailing through the doldrums." We see Nicho, who tells a story about meeting with a meterologist who talked about clouds all day, and he asked him how to tell a good cloud from a bad one. "There is an element of luck... I"m lucky I enjoy it." Luke talks about being stuck in the doldrums, playing cat-and-mouse with Dongfeng. Overlapped with a time-laps of the drone shot of the two boats - which I realize now shows a third boat, Vestas, ahead of them both. Simeon, on the helm, talks about trying to sail from puff to puff. Shot of Dongfeng ahead of them and to leeward. Luke talks about how he thinks Dongfeng is probably tense on board, with their close competitor MAPFRE close by. Shot of a rain cloud. Drone shot from astern as the sun is setting to port with a competitor on the horizon while Brad is hoisted up the mast. Drone shots circling him at the masthead showing rain clouds and the other boats around them. Nicolai talks about them sending Brad up to look for the beeze, having 5 boats in the same area. Simeon, shirtless with the low sun on him, talks about being pretty happy with the situation. "Fighting, you know, every single watch and hour." A shot of them approaching a competitor (I think; unless it's a low-altitude drone shot of their own boat) with the sunset sky behind them. We see the other boat just a few boatlenghts away. Someone says, "There's somebody standing on the prod." [?] Brad (I think) calls out to them: "Who's the monkey on the bowsprit?" We hear the response. Something like, "Go back to Kerikeri, mate", which makes Brad chuckle. [Brad and Blair Tuke are both from Kerikeri, NZ.] I think this must be the super-close approach they had with MAPFRE around 2018.01.10 08:20:10 UTC, so that would make it either Blair or Louis who's answering. Brad, invisible in the dark: "It's nice to talk to somebody from another boat for a change. As much as I love these guys, it's nice to hear a different voice for once. Especially one from Kerikeri." Awesome drone shot passing AkzoNobel at low altitude, flying toward MAPFRE. Lightning-flash illuminated shots of them sailing in the squall that night.Night, in the rain. Lightning flashes. Heh. Brian Carlin beat Martin by less than 8 minutes in getting his video up from TTToP. The crew works in flashes of lightning. Kevin, shouting: "Ease up the luff, Jack!" I kind of love this one, and love the contrast it makes with Brian Carlin's on TTToP, in terms of each OBR's different filmmaking style. Ima favorite both of them, though I'm not sure I would have favorited either by itself. My tags, my rules. :-)At night, in the red light, we see rain coming down on deck as the crew trims the sails. There's a flash of lightning and almost immedaitely a crash of thunder. Brian [Thompson], who was in the cockpit in his shorts getting a shower, heads below. "Instruments went down." The camera follows him to the nav station, where Dee is sitting. "We just lost everything... I think it's coming back on. Whoa; the computer's just went funny. Okay; it's coming back on." On deck it's pouring rain. There's another flash, and several seconds later the thunder. Brian, looking at the radar screen. "Half a mile. We're getting out of it pretty quickly."Standing in the galley, Joan talks in Spanish. On the helm, Pablo talks in Spanish. I'm picking up "hot" and "tired". Louis, below, shirtless and sweating: "It's really hot at the moment. It's very difficult to sleep." He shows the spritzer and spritzes himself with water. Támara, lying down in the bow, talks in Spanish and laughs. Sophie looks down through the hatch, talks about shade being important. Blaire, trimming, talks about heat and sun protection. Below, in the galley, he talks about the fresh water being warm, and the fact that the watermaker is getting much more of a workout than in the Southern Ocean. On the foredeck, Támara talks in Spanish, I think about her drinking water being hot. She and Blair construct a sun shade from the stack and an outrigger. On the helm, Pablo talks in Spanish. Blair puts on sunscreen. Below, Louis spritzes himself. Late in the afternoon, they get some wind and start moving. Everyone is looking to starboard. The view shifts in that direction, and we see why: AkzoNobel, less than a mile away to leeward and slightly ahead; behind them, two more boats: I think Vestas to the left and Dongfeng to the right. Night shot with AkzoNobel just a boatlength or two behind them.Frank on the helm at sunrise. Justine trims. Doldrums. Franck, on the bow, talks about how the doldrums is a very large area compared to the Atlantic, and the course is set requiring them to go through it. Now there's a weird wind from the southwest, which is impossible according to the model. Just have to push the boat and use the wind you have and be very concentrated on tuning. Remember is it's a game, and the finish line is very far away. We were in front of the fleet a long time, but the important part of the race is now. And the first boat to catch the wind, and then 1,000 miles to race. The goal is to stay with the fleet, not take too much risk, and we have the good speed to be in the front when the wind is stable. Don't be stressed. Shot of AkzoNobel ahead of them, then next to them. A whale surfaces near them. Has a small dorsal - sei whale? Horace talks on the bow about the heat, and having patience when trimming. Talks about having passed AkzoNobel. "Next target: Vestas. Let's go. There. Not too far." We see Vestas ahead and to port. They sail faster in a bit of a puff. Concentrating. Looks like all hands on deck. Then: drifting again. From below, Horace calls out the latest sched. Jack, the sunset behind him: "Day of snakes and ladders... This afternoon was quite nice. Had a big cloud come. Had more than 10 knots of wind for the first time in 3 days, which was a real pleasure. Made a bit forward, but it wasn't very long. So there's still a lot of work to do." Amazing low-altitude drone shot, overtaking them from astern with the sunset and AkzoNobel (left) and MAPFRE (right) to port of them. Then another drone shot from the opposite angle showing Vestas closer to them, to starboard. Favorting this one, too, mostly (again) for the drone work. Nice job by Martin.Kyle, on the helm in glassy conditions at sunrise, talks about how slow it's been. They've been going 1 knot; "with 3 and a half knots now it feels like 20." Jens trims, chuckles. "Hot. Hot and slow." Yann's longer-lens closeups are cool-looking. Sally: "Torture." Abby sleeps in her bunk. Closeup of a fan. Sam, at the galley sink: "Frustrating. Extremely frustrating and slow." Awesome drone shots of Brunel sailing upwind with a giant, dark rain cloud behind them. They peel from J1 (I think) to the MH0 while the drone videos them. Abby looks through binoculars at their competitors. "I see a boat with red sails, so could be Dongfeng or could be MAPFRE." Jens: "They're still ahead of us, but catching up just now. Got some good breeze now." Then a shot of them slatting in no wind again. Fish breaking the surface. Sunset. Favoriting this one just for that drone sequence.Glassy conditions as sails slat back and forth. TJ points out the sights: "Little puff over here; little puff over there. Kinda caught in the middle." Chuy steers. Tony on the bow: "Do you want the jib back on the other side?" We see three boats on the horizon behind them: two relatively close and one, in the middle, further away. I'm guessing that's, left to right, AkzoNobel, MAPFRE, and Dongfeng. On the bow, Tony and SiFi chat about neighbors, where they'd live if they lived in town. SiFi reminisces about the 2008 Volvo. This one is pretty up there for light conditions. Tony talks about how the boats behind have closed up. "Everyone's sailing the boats pretty similar now, based on what we can see with the binoculars." Talks about the weather, sunshine. "Might be trapped here forever." Shot of a distant funnel cloud. Tom: "That one's moving towards us. And we're not moving." Drone shot of them ghosting along about 1.5 knots.Mostly dark sky. Drone shots of Scallywag sailing in the doldrums. Alex below. Libby and Witty below at the nav station, checking a sched. Libby: "Made gains on the fleet. Fastest boat; going a whole 4 knots." Drone shot of sunrise. Witty: "We're worried about finding a passing lane between here and Hong Kong. Because we can't finish here into Hong Kong." Libby talks about another 250 miles of light stuff. Annemieke in the bow: "Boring!" Annemieke in the bow. Alex talks about his messy roommate, Bessie. Talks about the heat, difficulty sleeping. Shot of crew sleeping on the bow. Annemieke talks about the difference when they're moving vs. when they're not. She feels like they're doing well.TTToP slats in the night. Dee, on the foredeck in the morning light talks about the other competitors, the position report coming in in 15 minutes. Sunrise. As the light grows they pick out the other boats. Bernardo takes bearings. At the nav station, Dee checks the sched. "We're still in the lead by four and a half miles." She announces the sched on deck. Vestas is 10 miles away bearing 059. Drone shot pulls away from the crew on the bow. Very high drone shot looking down on them. Pole shot underwater showing the keel. Dee talks about knowing where everyone else is. Difficult bit is in 12 hours when we think the breeze will start to fill. At the moment they're not stressed. Confident in their position. But it's about geting the boat going when the breeze fills. Then the stress will begin.We see a shot looking down the foreward hatch into the bow, where Bernardo is lying on a pad. Next to him Francesca is sleeping; Bleddyn is putting a blue hat on his head. Bernardo laughs. On deck, Liz and Dee sit in makeshift tent. Liz: "Is this allowed? We're using all supplied equipment... all parts of the boat, so I figured it's class-legal." Brian asks Dee what she thinks. Dee: "I think it's a savior. An absolute savior." Shot of the glassy see in front of them, winch, the bow. Dee: "It is hot. Damn hot. So hot you have to put your shoes on to walk on deck. And we have a white deck." Liz shows sunscreen, hat, hand-bearing compass, binoculars "for potential bird-watching and looking at the competition". Dee describes the latest sched: "At the moment we are leaders of the pack." But she points out that 6 of the 7 boats are within sight of each other. "There's not a lot in it." Drone shot from above showing someone at the masthead and the deep blue water all around them. In the tent, Liz and Dee and Martin discuss optimizations. Dee says they never use the A3, so let's rip up the A3 and use that.High drone shot of Vestas on a blue ocean with very little wind. AkzoNobel is visible a few miles away to windward. Mark, on the wheel, points to three boats to weather. We see a shot of them; left to right: AkzoNobel, Dongfeng, MAPFRE. Phil and Hannah lie in the shade of the main. Phil: "It's probably a really nice comfortable 50 degrees downstairs, and about 47.8 out on deck. Sea temperature of 32 degrees, so it's just a pleasure." Nick and Mark in the cockpit look to weather, talk about the other boats getting the wind first. Sam, to Nick: "What do you know, chief?" (On the helm, Mark bangs the wheel.) Nick: "Um. Mark's scaring me." Below, TJ talks about how hot it is and points out blisters forming behind the paint/surface coating (?) on the starboard side due to the sun. Talks about needing to drink another bottle of water. We see a shot of a pad in the foreward sail locker where someone has been sleeping, drenched in sweat. On deck, Stacey sits near the mast in an eerie silence. "We're barely moving and we've got four other boats all within eyeshot of each other." TJ looks through binoculars at AkzoNobel, describing what sails they have up: "They're not furled because their zigzags are lining up with the jib. So it's the J1 or the Code 0." They joke about the routing, it taking 3,000 years to reach their destination. Tony, from the wheel, calls out, "If we're out here for 3,000 years we'll have a few typhoons to deal with." SiFi walks forward, talks about the GPS mark time being 1,360 days. Nick: "That's Instagrammable."Sally is below. She's dressed kind of warmly, and they seem to be sailing fast, so I think this is footage from earlier in the leg. Sally: "I don't know the answer to that. You want one word for each?" Abby: "Three words?" Carlo: stares blankly. Bouwe: "For this leg or what?" Yann: "For this leg." Carlo: stares blankly. Abby: Stares into space, thinking. Sally: "What I like the most? Probably the teamwork. Bouwe: "I like the most? The teamwork." Sam: "Leaving Port Phillip Bay." There's a competitor barely visible behind them; if this is the afternoon of the first day, as I'm guessing it is, that would probably be TTToP. Jens: "Getting started again." Carlo: "Nice downwind sailing." Sam: "Dislike the most? I'm not sure." Bouwe: "I dislike the most that we're behind." Abby: "I dislike the position we're in." Sally: "Staying on one tack for so long. It gets a little bit boring." Jens: "Bad first 24 hours." Carlo: "Nasty freeze-dried. The food." Sam: "I don't know. It's all good." Kyle: "If anything it's gotta be sailing with Sam Newton. This guy here." [He points and laughs.] Sam lies in his bunk, looking at an iPod/mobile device. On deck in the dusk, Carlo trims the headsail sheet. Bouwe steers. Slatting in the dark. Sunrise as they sail in light conditions. Looking up the J0 in light winds. Sally, in a balaclava: "Hot!" Abby hands out a white chocolate macadamia cookie. Drone shot of them drifting in glassy conditions. People sleeping in the bow. Sam: "Better on deck than below... It's an oven there." Low-altitude drone shot of Brunel drifting in glassy conditions, the hot sun behind the boat.We see Ugo launch the drone, which flies away. MAPFRE drifts on a glassy ocean. Very low-altitude drone shots that circle the boat, first farther away and then close.At one point we see a distant competitor ahead and to leeward. We see Sophie's silhouette on the bow as they hoist the J1 (or maybe it's just that the J1 is set with a loose halyard for drifting/windseeking conditions).Drone shots of a piece of flotsom (looks like a log with a net trailing from it). A couple of sharks circle it.Drone circles the masthead. Someone (not Liz, I don't think, but not sure who) is there scanning for wind. Drone shot from high overhead looking down on the deep blue sea beneath the boat.Sophie, invisible in the dark, talks about how it's been painful. Not a lot of wind, Dongfeng is a long way ahead and AkzoNobel has passed them... Quite frustrating. Xabi's voice, announcing AkzoNobel's position. Crew stacking forward on the bow in red headlamps. Views of stars, sounds of slow sailing. In the dawn, Blair holds the clew of the J1 as they flop. Talks in detail about how frustrating it is, how a big cloud came through and compressed the fleet. They went from furthest north boat and the fleet compressed and sailed around them. Daybreak now; it's fully glassed. AkzoNobel was most frustrating; went from 2 miles behind them before the cloud to 6 miles in front, sailing a half-mile to leeward of them. Willy, sitting on the lowered J1 on the bow, talks in Spanish about the wind and the competition. Blair on the helm. Sunrise. Glassy conditions. Rob on the helm. Joan looking around. Willy and Blair sit under the clew of the MH0, talking.High drone shot with distant island and clouds. Low-altitude drone shot with sunset. Shot of the wheel at sunrise. Grant, on the bow, talks quietly about having 2 knots of windspeed at sunrise, and battling at 2 knots of boatspeed themselves. Sunrise shot beyond someone (not sure who) silhouetted on the helm. Grant talks about it being a battle with the heat, trying to maintain boatspeed. Ben, on the bow, talks about the light winds and boatspeed. A little shifty for now, but when they get out it's a fast shot to Hong Kong. It's refreshing to not be cold and wet, but it's frustrating. Drone shots. Grant: 17 years since the first one he was involved in. Similarities, but the boats get pushed far beyond what anyone would have imagined. He talks about Ben, who went in 3 years' time from asking for a job sweeping out the boatyard to racing in this event. "That's just great to see." Ben talks about having sailed before with Grant on Ragamuffin. He's a knowledgeable guy. He and Witty have sailed together for many years. And [John] Fisher. They're Australians; a little arrogant. Trying to learn from them. Grant: Witty's got a great team of guys here. And girls. I think they all get on really well. I think it's a great squad and an exciting team to be involved in." Drone shot.Crash cam footage from the stern cam: They're sailing in light wind and heavy rain in a squall. There's a flash of lightning and a loud crash. Rome, on the helm, jumps off the helm platform to crouch down in the stern. They laugh. Rome: "Holy shit!" Below, Kyle and Sam watch the footage on a laptop. Kyle: "He's very easily scared, that Rome-y. You'll walk around a corner and he'll jump. Very easily frightened." More of them watch and laugh. Rome: "Shat my pants it was so close." Sam, on deck, talks about having the lightning strike quite close, feeling the static through their bodies. "Bit close for comfort. Lucky we got out with the instruments unscathed." Night shot of distant lightning. Shot of the mast instruments at night. Bouwe at the nav station. Closeup of the compass dial. Slomo wake shot. Shot of passing Ghupuna; drone shots of passing Ghupuna. Sally, with a Scopolamine patch behind her right ear, looks at land. "Nice. It's a little bit of something besides blue water." Jens: "It's always nice to see land. It's only halfway, looks good. Have a couple of boats we want to catch." Yann, to Bouwe on the helm: "You like the green you're seeing, or...?" Bouwe: "No. I like more the beach, actually. I'm more a beach man." Shots of the island. Abby and Sally working in the pit. High drone shot of Makira behind them.High drone shot of Scallywag sailing on starboard gybe with a small island 3 miles to port. Think it's Mwamwako, the island just south of Ghupuna. Parko, shirtless in the cockpit, says it's quite a good milestone for them and the fleet, going past the Solomon Islands. More high drone shots, now showing the rest of the island group the boats rounded: Gupuna, Makira (San Cristobal). Parko: "Not many people ever see this spot." Trystan, on deck, talks about how being in this race has been a long-term goal. Says there are the big three: Olympics, America's Cup, Volvo. Hopes that after they get to Hong Kong he'll be able to stay with the team. Witty: "He worked in the boatyard, he knew the boats very well. He was a big strong guy. And for me, he was a rugby player... Nine out of ten guys I've ever played rugby with always put the team first." Witty talks about how the sailing is as grueling on the body as he thought it was. The demand for teamwork is even more than he expected, and he always knew it was the toughest team sport in the world. Parko: He enjoys the challenge. Special memories. John talks about growing up, loving sailing, seeing the Whitbread start at the Solent. "It isn't for everyone but you should always challenge yourself." In a rain squall, Witty takes a shower under the boom. Grant, on the wheel: "Needed to clean up his act a bit." John explains that they were able to have a quick freshwater shower in the squall when the wind was light. Witty explains that it's hard to find a great sailor and make them a great person. Easier to find great people and turn them into great sailors. "That's what we do on Scallywag."Slomo shot of sunrise clouds on the horizon ahead of them with a distant sail: AkzoNobel. Brian shoots from the foredeck facing aft; Dee is sitting near him, while Liz calls from the wheel: "I told you I had a halo, but nobody ever believes me." Dee: "We were in sight of Vestas, and now AkzoNobel and a red boat [Dongfeng] which is very exciting." Dee discusses their position with Annalise and someone else on the bow in the half-light. Night shot of stars, red-illuminated sails. Sunrise shot slatting with no wind. Elodie looking thorugh a hand-bearing compass. Bernardo and Francesca sit nearby. Francesca points out the nearby boats: "Dongfeng is there, AkzoNobel is here. And Vestas is there. We are in second. It's all about Elodie." Elodie laughs. "No. What is important is our spot at the finish." Bernardo: "It doesn't matter how you start; it's how you finish." Elodie: "It's good for the morale of the troops." Shots of a distant competitor. Shot of someone on the helm (maybe Annalise?) with the sunrise behind her. Elodie, on the bow, calls to the stern: "Three degrees we gained." Then quieter, to Francesca sitting next to her: "I think." She takes more bearings; they talk about Támara on MAPFRE. Drone shot of TTToP sailing in light wind.Spectacular drone shot of a whale feeding in a school of fish, turning on its side and opening its mouth wide as it charges through the school. More shots with Vestas approaching in the background with the late-afternoon light and clouds behind them. Stacey talks about sailing past the whale feeding. "It's pretty spectacular, and something you don't get to see every day." Nick talks about seeing it. Tony, on the helm. "I've never seen anything like it. I can't wait to see the footage." SiFi at the nav station talks about sailing along in light air, trying to gain some bearing on the guys to weather. "One of those really nice moments when you're reminded how lucky we are... A nice reminder as well of how important it is that we're spreading our message of sustainability and keeping the oceans clean and preserving nature... Hopefully... maybe when my kids are my age they can see the same thing and we aren't dealing with a sitaution where there's more plastic in the ocean than there are fish." Ends with more drone shots of Vesas sailing past the feeding whale, and then sailing away from the drone.Amazing high-altitude drone shot showing AkzoNobel far below and a number of islands, clouds, and I think a rainbow in the distance. Pretty sure that's Ghupuna closest to them. Jules explains that they're at the east end of the Solomons. In third place. "Still a long way to go." Drone shot with island behind them. Nicolai: "Solomon Islands. Beautiful place. One of those places you don't get to go often that you probably never will come back to." Shot of whale surfacing on their starboard quarter. More islands. Drone shot of purse seiner ("Southern Seas No. 302 SI-LV110") fishing as they pass in the background. Drone records them pulling in what looks like a struggling blue shark. Detail of the fishing boat's mast, with multiple crow's nests with what look like spotting scopes mounted on them.Kevin, on the helm, whistles some music. Martin guesses the name; Kevin points his thumb at him. "He got it." Carolijn asks what it is; I think Kevin says Claire de Lune? But he translates into English at Carolijn's request as "the sound of the moon" rather than "the light of the moon"? I dunno. Guess it kind of sounds like Debussey. Maybe it's something else. Carolijn's turn. She laughs at her inept whistling. She asks Jérémie is he's a good whistler. Jérémie: No. Kevin whistles again: L'amour est un oiseau rebelle (Habanera) from Carmen. These European folk are so damn cultured! (I did recognize this one, though, despite being an ugly American.) Ima favorite this one, just because it's so cool how they're hanging out at the front of the fleet, just chillin'. Reminds me of that scene in The Natural when the team's firing on all cylinders and Pop and Red are sitting in the dugout playing basically the same game.Joan talks in Spanish about the Solomons, wind, squalls, complicated strategy, Dongfeng ahead, and the other boats behind them. Xabi talks about how they've been in this situation before, lead by Dongfeng through much of the leg. "Now we've gained as much as possible, and wait for our opportunity." Talks about the doldrums coming up. Night shot of distant lightning silhouetting the helmsman. In the day, Xabi in the pit. Shot of Dongfeng ahead of them and to port with an island below them. Stacking. Green island to leeward. Pablo grinds with an island below them. Stacking forward. Shot astern with a whale surfacing; then slomo of the whale surfacing. AkzoNobel behind them. Dongfeng ahead and to weather. Light winds. AkzoNobel close behind them. Willy looking through binoculars. Drone shot of a fishing boat with a purse seine and MAPFRE in the background. Circling drone shot of MAPFRE with Dongfeng visible in 3 miles away, ahead and to weather.Martin manufactures a story by asking all the crew what they'd like to be if they couldn't be a sailor. Carolijn: A pilot. Horace: A coach, a sailing coach, teaching young Chinese sailors, sharing his experience. Carolijn: A pilot, not just flying people around, but something in the military or research. The navigational side is not dissimilar to what they do on the water, and she finds it interesting. Jack: Mountain climber. But hard to make a career out of. Growing up liked engineering. Kevin: A rugby player. But getting too old for that now. "A clever guy." Daryl: "I wanted to be an aviation engineer, but sailing got in the way of that. Probably better off for it." Justine: Teacher.Liz, in her bunk, playfully pushes against the bottom of the bunk above her. "Just relax to beat the heat." Francesca raises her left arm to spray something (deoderant?) on her armpit while grinning at the camera, then lowers her arm to spray the right arm, revealing her completely badass upper-arm tattoo. Maybe it's a lighthouse? Also has elephants on her left forearm, and something else (a floral pattern? waves?) on her right bicep. In his bunk, shirtless, Bernardo talks about staying cool "with this beautiful fan". Liz sprays him with a spray bottle; he laughs. She sprays Brian [Johnson] at the galley. Shot of someone (Annalise?) and Francesca splayed out in the bow, sleeping. Liz, in her bunk: "I just like helping other people out." She talks about how to deal with the heat in her bunk. Shots of Annalise on the foredeck, stacking in the bow. Francesca taking her hands off the wheel. Martin, sitting to leeward, talks about how they're closing up with the leaders. Drone shot from astern. Annalise in the bow stacks forward and talks about closing on the leaders. Slomo shot of Frederico on the helm.Shot looking forward from over Phil's shoulder as he drives. TJ, shirtless in the cockpit, points out the land to port, the Solomons (Ghupuna, off the east coast of Makira/San Cristobal). "And we've got Dee just above us, she's burned up all her gauge, working down. Akzo's just ahead of us, a couple of miles away, MAPFRE a couple of miles ahead of them, Dongfeng a couple of miles ahead of them." Talks about how close the boats are. Weird on-screen title appears, white letters on blue: "Analyzing in background (step 1 of 2)". Assume that's an editing glitch by Amory. We see the chart plotter screen below, which zooms in to show them rounding San Cristobal. Mark, at nav station, recounts the leg. Got off to a good start, fell back by playing the inside, but now they're back in touch with a couple of thousand miles to go. "Plenty of opportunity." Drone shots of Vestas sailing on starboard. Stacey, trimming, talks about being in touch with the others. "It feels like a long time, when you're right there and you can't pass them." On the foredeck, someone unzips a new sail. Camera zooms in to show AkzoNobel and MAPFRE ahead of them. Drone shot with San Cristobal in the background.High drone shots of TTToP. Sweeping drone shot of them double-heading with the MH0 and J3.Drone shot of Dongfeng sailing on starboard, double-heading with the J0 (I think?) and J3. As the drone circles ahead of them from port to starboard we see an island - Ghupuna, off the east end of Makira, also called San Cristobal, in the Solomons - behind them on the port quarter. Drone circles behind them and we see a dark raincloud ahead. Another shot with Makira behind them. More nice drone shots.High drone shot of Brunel. More drone shots. Drone closeup of the cockpit, with Yann on the drone controls. Shots on deck of them going through a squall with rain and spray. Slomo of Carlo wiping water from his face in the pit. Slomo washing machine shots from the cockpit, the stern. Bouwe, below, explains that they're heading north toward the doldrums. Mentions that Neptune has a victim coming, because someone in the crew is a polliwog (or whatever it is they call them). Maybe that's Sam? Capey at the nav station. Bouwe describes the results of the latest sched. Boats ahead have less breeze now, so they should catch up soon. Lightning in the distance. Crew showering in a rain squall. Flopping with the J0 in no wind. Kyle, below, describes how they got stuck in a rain squall, then stuck in no breeze for an hour and a half. Drone shot circling them with no wind.Night. We see lightning flashes miles away. Martin describes what we're seeing. Someone (Elodie?) gasps. "That was a beautiful one!" Someone else (Bernardo?) responds: "A very beautiful one."Xabi, at the nav station, talks in Spanish about squalls, competition, Solomon Islands. On deck, Rob talks about the wind and the squall; future conditions. Pablo talks on the deck in Spanish about the competition. Closeup of nav computer screen showing the four lead boats all lined up. Shots on deck of fast sailing in a rain squall. Crash cam stern cam footage of Xabi getting washed off hte aft end of the cabin and ending up on the cockpit sole next to the middle pedestal. Hope he's okay. Slomo shots of competitors: AkzoNobel and Dongfeng to port, and Vestas to starboard. Slomo faces in the rain. Low-altitutde drone shots of MAPFRE sailing under full main and MH0.Night shots: looking up from the stern at the full moon behind clouds. Wake. Jérémie's hands on the wheel; him steering. Charles, standing forward of the wheel, talks in French. Looking up the mast at stars. Then, in the daytime, we see rain falling to weather. Franck and Jérémie look that way. Horace looks through binoculars. To weather we see three competitors. From left to right: AkzoNobel, MAPFRE, and Vestas. Justine explains: They were leading, hit a squall, the boats to weather stayed in more pressure and now they're all in a line again. "It's a bit disappointing but it happens sometimes." Jérémie jokes about how he was on watch and lost 10 miles. Daryl jokes with him; Charles steers. Crew works in the cockpit (sail change?). Charles: Not sure they're already in the doldrums. But for sure is a new start. And after leading the race most of the time from the start of the leg, all the boats are in the same line now: Akzo, MAPFRE. Now they'll have two or three days in light winds, and maybe will determine the race who escapes from it first and gets the new wind. Shot of AkzoNobel close to leeward. Horace: "Not easy, not what we want, but this is the Volvo Ocean Race. No one knows what will happen at the end." Talks about how it's too hot, and he wants to take off his "everything."Drone shot of Vestas reaching in 10 knots of breeze with MAPFRE visible several miles away, ahead of them and to leeward. More drone shots.Liz, at the masthead, waves to the drone. (On Twitter I wrote that I was interpreting this as a Wisdom dream sequence. "Look Liz! I'm flying! I'm really flying!")Brian and Dee stand in the cockpit looking at cloud activity. Brian: "That cloud is getting a lot bigger." Brian and Martin talk about the ideal wind scenario. Dee explains that the hard bit is trying to get north. Brian: clouds are always bad; sometimes very, very bad. "If you can stay just in front of it, that's okay. But if you get enmeshed in the back of them, you can be stuck there until it decides to release you from its grip." Shot of the nav station with weather displayed. Dee, on deck, talks about how the forecasts aren't very good in this region. Martin: "We need to be on our toes."Drenched in rain, Stacey works the pit during a squall. Reefed main visible behind her. She takes a washing machine wave over her head; smiles. Stacey: "Bad hair day." TJ takes spray by the mast as he works on the main. SiFi talks about the increase in "convective activity", how this is probably the "gateway to the doldrums"; they've had a big cloud system come through, some pretty big thunderstorms. "We're now reaching along in 28 knots." Stacey clears a line by the boom as they rehoist the full main.Time-lapse of from cabin looking aft of sunset, night. Below in red light, Nick explains that a cloud headed them, but they don't want to give up their weather gauge so they're switching to the J0 to stay high. View of the nighttime sail change from the cabin area looking forward; stars visible ahead of them. Crew in the cockpit, foredeck work. Tony: "Nice one! That was awesome!" Later, Mark steers while SiFi sits next to him talking about it being a nice opportunity to get some experience with that sail. In the dark, Nick talks about how the peel went well. "Damn; it's a beautiful night." View up the mast of Taurus, with the Pleides and Hyades.Spreader cam view of Liz working the clew. Shot looking forward at outrigger lashed to the lifelines next to the stack. Liz, on the helm: "Spend long enough next to the good guys and it's bound to rub off." They're up at the front of the fleet. "We might have been called the rookies, but we've got a lot of skill and talent on board." Bleddyn takes the helm from Liz: "Nice to see that we're back in the game." Frederico on the pedestal talks about their improvement. Annalise: "I think we're getting better at figuring out modes. That's what the other teams have on us; they've just got so much experience." Slomo closeup of Bleddyn's hands on the wheel.Justine trims. "Main on." Jérémie grinds. We see a series of closeups: The chain drive in the pedestal turning. The drive linkages and drive shafts. The winch drum. The drum turning. The sheet coils on the drum. The mainsheet block. The mainsail, looking up. Time-lapse view of the instruments on the mast. Fom top to bottom: Boatspeed, True Wind Direction, Relative Wind Angle, True Wind Speed, Heading (degrees True). Speed gradually builds during the time lapse from 16.3 to 18.9. Shot shifts to slomo as spray comes over the bow. Shot of the keel bulb under water to weather. Kevin working the bow in spray. Crew in the cockpit: Carolijn on the helm, Horace trimming, Daryl on the pedestal, Franck standing to leeward. A small ship is several miles away to leeward, approaching on a collision course. Kevin looks at them through binoculars. Charles talks to them in French on a handheld VHF. Kevin explains that Charles talked to them, and they said they were happy to bear away a bit so as not to cross in front of them. Kevin: "Charles told them that was very nice, but that if they can also grab AkzoNobel to leeward of us that's perfect as well." Martin asks if they could be pirates. Carolijn laughs: "Very friendly pirates." Kevin explains they are laying cable or a military vessel or something like that. Carolijn makes a lanyard-pulling motion (like "honk your horn!"), then waves to the ship, which is approaching them a half mile away on their leeward quarter. She gives a thumbs up. Carolijn: "Looks like something military. They are French-speaking, so I'm guessing something to do with New Caledonia." Slomo shots: Carolijn and Justine grinding on the aft pedestal, someone trimming, Franck on the helm, spray, Carolijn taking coils off a winch, Horace giving a thumbs-up from the clew of the J3, Carolijn spraying her face from a water bottle.Sophie, on the aft pedestal, summarizes where they stand. Have gained back on the two lead boats, AkzoNobel and Dongfeng. Blair, trimming, talks about how they caught sight of the other two boats that morning sooner than they expected; MAPFRE got some good pressure and the other two boats got stuck a little too low, such that "Vestas and us caught them a little bit." Now into tradewind sailing. Now they're in the same wind so it's all down to boatspeed. Maybe there will be more clouds at night that allows for bigger gains and losses. Sophie: "I think we're all pretty excited to be back at the front of the fleet." Willy stands at the shrouds looking up at the sails. Shot of Dongfeng ahead of them. Támara looking forward. Sunset. A bird (a Brown Booby, I think) flies above the masthead. Pole shots of the rudder, the wake.Grant, on the helm, makes the shaka sign. "Beautiful day. Tasman Sea at its finest." Drone shot of Scallywag from high overhead. Libby sits at the nav station looking at routing. "Pretty good sched for us." She talks about how for the next few days they should see a gain (due to compression). Shot of Parko on the helm with the sunset behind him. Liz at the nav station talks about letting the crew know what to expect, so they know when to expect a lot of effort and gybes, vs. when to expect straight-line sailing. Annemieke grinds on the pedestal. Pretty sunset shot. Witty at the nav station waits for the sched. Pretty drone shots of Scallywag with a squall in the distance. Drone shot. Witty: "We've gained, but not a lot." On the helm, Grant takes his hands off the wheel and lets the boat sail itself for a few seconds. Sunrise drone shot wth rain.Spreader cam shot of the deck as TTToP sails on starboard gybe. Then we see stern cam footage as Liz calls out information about... something. They seem kind of concerned; I think maybe there's a funnel cloud/waterspout ahead of them? Not super clear from the shot, but Liz's comment at the end about it "going away from us" would seem to make sense with that. Wonder if something was mentioned in one of the other media sources (Twitter, Daily Live...). I'm just watching the videos at this point while I try to catch up, so I don't actually know.Drone shot of AkzoNobel with low sun behind them. In the audio we hear Jules announcing the latest sched, with distances to other boats. Switches to closeups of him talking in the companionway. Below, Brad talks to Nicolai about "Master and Commander". On the foredeck, stacking, Martine slips and falls. She sits in the cockpit and talks about "Master and Commander": "It feels like Master and Commander. We are chasing the French boat." Below, Jules talks about doing 11 gybes in 11 hours. We see the zigzag line on the chart screen. Nicolai, on the pedestal, talks about how they've been chasing Dongfeng, choosing to stick with them. Martine and Simeon talk about it as a battle. Martine: "It is fighting a battle but no guns. Just a lot of trimming the sails." We see a closeup of Cécile's finger (the little finger on her left hand) with a nasty slice as she bandages herself. She explains how she cut it on the handhold when she was thrown off-balance. In the cockpit, Brad, invisible in a balaclava and sunglasses, jokes about wanting to cut it off and cauterize it. "I wanted to do it today but she wouldn't let me." He explains that the pirates used to do it all the time. References Master and Commander again. Nicolai talks about Dongfeng and trying to learn from their moding (whether they sail high or low) and the sail combinations and setup. We see Dongfeng in the distance. Closeup of Cécile's hand with the bandaged finger as she trims. Great drone shot of AkzoNobel sailing fast, triple-heading with the A3.Bleddyn trims. Beyond him, Vestas is a few miles to leeward and slightly ahead. Bleddyn: "Earlier, MAPFRE sailed past us as if we were anchored, which was a bit frustrating." Now Vestas is doing well against them too. Trying to match speeds with them, which will drag them to Hong Kong with the leaders. "That's the aim. It's frustrating, but it's good. We're pushing ourselves hard." Closeup of Bleddyn's hands. "I'm like a snake; I'm just peeling my skin." Closeup of the eye lead of the J3 (I think?) as crew shifts stack forward in the background. Dee talks to a crewmember about a competitor: "The header we're expecting, they've just sailed loads of extra miles for no reason." Dee calls the chant as they shift the stack forward. Closeup of tightening the stack ratchet. Slomo of someone (Francesca?) looking through a hand-bearing compass at a competitor. Martin, on the helm in his max foulies, talks about a squall with a twister that they just managed to avoid. "The waterspout was to leeward and we had the top of it to weather. We went straight under it."Below, Jack repairs a winch drum. Talks about how it has been dry and relatively flat on deck. Quite a nice change. On deck he reassembles the drum, tests it from the pedestal. Closeup of the instruments on the mast. Carolijn: Still in the lead, AkzoNobel on their heels. They've been following their line. Now Dongfeng is running out of the breeze first, so there's some compression happening. But now the pressure is building. MAPFRE and Vestas 20 miles to their east. Still a very long leg to go. Doldrums in about 2 days. Interesting and tough. Then the NE trades. By the wheel, Kevin taps on the intercom. "Franky? Did you get the position report?" Franck's voice comes from the speakers: Dongfeng first. AkzoNobel second, 2.6 miles. Third is MAPFRE, 7 miles behind. Jérémie, on the grinder, says something in French. Kevin: Still ahead, which is nice. Now need to go fast on starboard. Low-altitude drone shot from close ahead and to starboard as Dongfeng triple-heads with the sun behind them. Cool drone tracking shot across their bow. Drone shot from close astern and to weather.Dee is at the nav station; Brian [Thompson] sits behind her. Dee talks about how she's lucky because she's sailed with Brian a lot, so they know how each other works. "And after all he is pretty much the fastest man on water, holds more speed records than anyone knows existed, so why wouldn't I have him on my boat with me?" Brian [Carlin] asks various crewmembers if they know how many speed records Brian [Thompson] has set. Elodie guesses 6. Liz, sleepy in her bunk: "I have no idea." Bernardo just wiggles his eyebrows in closeup. Frederico guesses 10. Bleddyn guesses 5. Martin, on the helm: 20. Annalise: "22. Actually I'm just making that up off the top of my head. But I know he has at least one with my mom and dad." Below, Brian answers: "I've set about 45 records, and I hold about 15." Bleddyn, on deck: "I feel terrible. Oh god. I won't be able to look him with a straight face. I hope he's asleep now, didn't hear all that." Martin: "He's gonna see the video, mate." Bleddyn: "He will, yeah."At the nav station, SiFi talks to Mark about the latest sched. "MAPFRE did the biggest run, and then we were next. The other guys were similar." Mark walks out to the cockpit to explain the situation. Tony's driving; Stacey's trimming, and Nick (I think?) is on the grinder in an unbranded (!) sleeveless teeshirt. Mark: "Got some good news. Gained on everyone except for MAPFRE. MAPFRE had the longest run; they're also the lowest." At the nav station, SiFi talks about how this leg is different from the last one, "not just because the sea temperature is 20 degrees warmer!" Last time the strategic options were more limited; just stay as close as possible to the ice gate. This leg there are more options. "It is enjoyable when there's a little more subtlety involved."Pablo, sitting ahead of the wheel as MAPFRE reaches on starboard, talks in Spanish about the competition. Rob, on the wheel: There's a split in the fleet, and you had to decide inshore or offshore. A bit of current offshore, but also better breeze. "We lost out bigtime, actually. The two leaders are far ahead." Talks about moving past Vestas and TTToP, and gaining some miles on the leaders. Willy, on the middle pedestal, talks about how of course it's good to gain miles on the leaders, but it's a long race, and you need to realize that the bungee stretches and comes back. "Winning more than losing. Still a long time to go." Pablo talks in Spanish. Shots at night: moonlight, full moon past clew of the sail, ratcheting the stack. In the sunrise, Blair and Xabi laugh about something on the aft pedestal. Wake shot of sunrise. Closeups: The wheel, Támara's face, Willy grinding. Slomo shots of Vestas to port and behind, and then astern of them. Louis works the outrigger, then gets hoisted out to the clew of the A3 to do something with the sheets.Shots at twilight of glum crew sailing. Pretty night shots of a gybe with glow-in-the-dark sail tapes and stars behind them. Carlo, on deck in 10 knots of wind, talks about the last few days; fantastic sailing. Bouwe, below, gets a cap, puts it on, and makes the "OK" sign. Capey on deck. Closeups of a gybe in the cockpit. Kyle, in the cockpit near the hatch, talks about the last few days, gybing, current. Figuring out how to gybe effectively with a new team. A little off the pace in a straight line; still working on that. Capey and Bouwe at the nav station looking at routing. Capey talks about being 200 miles east of the Gold Coast; "paradise." Talks about upcoming compression. After the Solomons, a chance to make a choice. In the doldrums becomes a cloud lottery; anything can happen.Drone shots of Scallywag triple-heading with the sun behind them on port, then on starboard. Annemieke, on deck, explains that they did a few gybes to stay in pressure. Says their gybes are getting better, sailing with 9 crewmembers. "It's way easier for us now than in the previous leg." More drone shots. Trystan, on deck, talks about getting into the swing of things, stacking and gybing. Shot of the foredeck. Witty: A thousand miles to the doldrums, set up on this lane, just off the Queensland border, looking forward to dim sum. "Very much looking forward to getting out of the position we're in at the moment..." He talks about how much easier it is with 9 crew. "I'm quite happy to be one of those people who puts his hand up to say I was completely wrong about sailing with less numbers... We're going to sail with maximum crew for the rest." Talks about having made a few more changes than he wanted, but that was due to the grueling previous leg. Hopes the new guys work out. Cool low-altitude drone shot tracking behind Scallywag as they sail on starboard in 12 knots of wind.Hannah grinds. Hannah: "It's really good to be back. It's been pretty good few days, lots of gybing, not the most amoutn of sleep, but it's warm, good breeze, and can still see two boats, so, pretty good to be back racing. Was a bit nervous about how I would slot back in after such a long time off the boat... It's been good." We see a gybe of the A3 from port to starboard, filmed from the J3 tack. Mark, on the middle pedestal, describes where the boats are near them. Are three groups of boats: Dongfeng and AkzoNobel ahead, the three of them in the middle, and Brunel and Scallywag a little bit behind. Have been gybing, now going to be a bit of a drag race on starboard. Shot of TTToP to a mile away to starboard (upwind of them, abeam) and MAPFRE a few miles to leeward and slightly ahead.Drone shot as Scallywag sails on starboard gybe with the Australian coast visible beyond them. At the nav station Libby explains that there's a big split, with 3 boats offshore, Brunel in the middle, and them inshore. Teams offshore have had more pressure and have made a bit of a gain. Shot of Scallywag sailing upwind from slightly outboard; Konrad must have the camera on a pole. Low elevation shot alongside the boat; wave hits the camera. Below, Libby talks to Witty at the nav station. Libby tells Konrad that it's been helpful to have Witty and Grant, who have lots of experience in these waters, to go with the weather model information. Libby talks about how impressive it is that new team members have been integrated so effectively. More pole shots of spray alongside. Below, Witty eats while talking to LIbby: "I'm making a point of not making you feel like I'm looking over your shoulder. Is it working?" [Libby laughs.] Witty explains that they don't have big egos. Everyone is part of the team. Washing machine shot of the cockpit. Witty talks about picking good people. Says Libby's fitting in well. He jokes that she's gotta get in front of her brother (on MAPFRE) before she gets a Scallywag tattoo (I think he said? Before she's fully accepted, I assume he's saying.) Drone shot of Scallywag with Austrailian coast in the background.TTToP sails at night with the full moon behind the sails. MAPFRE sails a few hudred yards away, below and slightly ahead of them. MAPFRE appears to be sailing slightly higher; they discuss that they might end up in their bad air. In the dark, Brian (Thompson), who's on the pedestal, explains the current situation to Brian (Carlin): In the middle of the Coral Sea, slightly north of Lord Howe Island, in a match race with MAPFRE and Vestas. He explains that it's helping them tune up and sail faster to be sailing next to the two boats. Liz, on the helm, talks about how it's pretty intense sailing close to the two boats. "Brian's down there calling relatives and we're just trying to match them." Dee, at the nav station: "Intense but exciting." Elodie, on the rail with binoculars, looks ahead and to port. "They look really loose on everything, that boat." She talks about how interesting it is that MAPFRE is sailing relatively high, while Vestas is managing to soak down without losing too much speed. "We're a bit the cheese in the sandwich here." Martin, looking to starboard with binoculars: "They've got sails in front and behind the shrouds as well." (Think he's talking about the stack.) Bernardo, trimming: "I'm smiling becuase I'm enjoying it. I don't have any reason not to smile." Dee, at the nav station: "I'm so proud to see these guys develop before your eyes... I'm a proud mum." Drone shots of TTToP sailing at sunrise on port gybe. Crew is shifting the stack. MAPFRE is visible ahead and to starboard.Spreader cam shot of the deck as Vestas triple-heads under A3/J2/J3. Mark on the helm; Stacey trimming. Tony, on deck: "We had a pretty good period over the night racing our friends here on MAPFRE." Talks about how they were sailing faster, and then they saw a bunch of "torches" (flashlights) on them in the night as they (presumably) did a sail change, which helped as well. Happy to be hanging with the top boat in the fleet in terms of speed. Talks about being inshore of the other boats in the fleet. Shot of MAPFRE astern. Mark summarizes the busy race so far. Then talks to Nick (I think) on the stern about strategy.Drone shot AT NIGHT of AkzoNobel silhouetted against the trail of the nearly full moon on the water behind them. Masthead red running light is visible, also four different white lights. Not sure what's up with those. Sail-illumination lights? Brad, on deck: "Beautiful night out here." Talks about chipping away at Dongfeng, who crossed them by 2.5 miles, and are now 5 miles away. Gybe coming up; hope to make more gains there. Simeon, at nav station below, nods to Sam. Simeon: "Yeah. Pretty happy." Luke, on deck on the wheel (I think): "Warm water. Full moon. Doesn't get any better... Great company. Go the A-team on here." Shot of Orion standing on his head next to the shrouds. Shot of the helmsman from the cockpit, then pans up the backstay to show the Southern Cross. Drone shot close to the boat from to leeward, illuminated by moonlight.Jules, at the nav station, talks to Sam. "How would I describe myself? Tired?... I think I'm pretty easy-going, most of the time, except when I'm tired." Sam: "How do you think the crew would describe you?" Jules: "Miserable. Quiet." On deck, Luke answers the question: "Uncomplicated, I would say. [laughs] No; he's a good rooster. Very rarely gets it wrong. It's only us getting it wrong that makes him look bad." Looks like this was shot as they were beating out of Port Phillip Bay on the first afternoon. Closeup of Jules at the nav station, rubbing his head. Shot of the computer showing weather. On deck, Brad points out Green Cape. "Everyone knows it's one of the most southeastern capes of Australia." Shot of the cape with its lighthouse. To the left is another boat, barely visible; I'm guessing it's Vestas. On deck, Simeon talks about needing to choose whether to play the coast or go offshore. Shot from the cabin of Jules (below) talking to Nicho (on deck). Simeon crouches down as water splashes over him. Simeon: "[something] stay in touch with the other guys. Otherwise you'll lose them." Jules discusses how the fleet is splitting. Also there are three different tidal models that disagree as to where the eddy is. More discussion by Simeon: gybe or not? Conversation with the three of them continues below at the nav station. Nicho: "If you gybe back, you're pretty much committed to playing the shore." Sam talks to Jules: "How would you describe the decision-making process on this boat?" Jules: "Not very clear. Because not everyone knows the full implications of everything they're talking about. You often get into situations like this where it's a tossup, you gotta trust one weather model or the other. Or you just do the conservative thing and stay with the fleet." Nicho, below, eating: "You've gotta kick it around. Kick it to death. And then make a gut call, usually. There's a fair bit of science involved... I think in the end for this situation, we're on a good heading with great pressure. More breeze than inshore." Sam: "How would you describe the decision-making process on this boat?" Nicho: "Plenty of input from everybody. At times this is Simeon's boat. I certainly from my side I feel like I can make the decision and live with it perhaps a bit easier. It's not a difficulty, it's just how it is. I guess we've kind of struggled and grappled with that sitaution a little. But no; the actual process I think is quite good. No one's angry or frustrated or anyting like that. It's just trying to weigh up all the pros and cons, come up with a decision."Dee sits at the nav station talking to Brian. Liz looks on from behind. The screen shows routing, and then a table (sched?). Dee, talking to Brian, claps her hands and grins. "We've got a yacht race! And we're in the middle of it, which is so nice." She talks about how they're maintaining longer than they have in other legs. Latest sched shows them ahead of MAPFRE and Vestas. Shot of her and Brian talking at the nav station. Slomo shot of Bernardo in the cockpit as spray flies from the outrigger. Annalise, below: "Gybing there ahead of Vestas and MAPFRE. It's always nice to see other boats around as well." Bleddyn, on deck, grins as he talks about seeing Vestas come into view in front of them and not being sure if it was a boat in their fleet, but then the sched came out and they knew it was Vestas.Spray on deck. Franck on the helm. Then at the nav station, he explains that the sched was good for them. Now they have a big gap (to second and third). Following their plan. On deck, Jack on the helm. Below, Horace talks about trying to fight for the lead on the second day out of Melbourne. Close to shore, lots of maneuvers. Shots of stacking the sails aft for a gybe. Stacking below. Spray. Sunset.Great drone shots of Brunel triple-heading on starboard gybe. Good overlapped audio from the boat. On the stern Bouwe talks about how they're not as fast as the other boats in the middle wind ranges. Maybe trimming, driving. A bit of an Achilles heel. Losses less than on the second leg. Managing to hang on; hopes the gap doesn't get any bigger. After the Solomon Islands will be other conditions and opportunities. Slomo wake shot with interesting cascading-curtain-of-water effect.Sunset washing machine shot of the cockpit from the cabin. Slomo sunset shot. Dee and Liz at the nav station wave at Brian, shooting them from the media station. Slomo of Bleddyn spraying fresh water on his face and grimacing. Elodie, below, talks about the conditions: 20-25 knots; the sea state makes things difficult. Had a not-very-good sched; not as fast as Dongfeng and AkzoNobel. Slomo sunset shot of Bernardo on the aft pedestal in spray. Below, Bernardo says: "It's kind of like living in a washing machine. No, it's kind of, having a house by the water, and you can listen to the waves every night. But then you go for a swim every half an hour... Not that bad. Can't complain."Drone shot of Scallywag triple-heading on starboard with a low headland behind them. Alex, taking off his foulie top below, explains that the routing has had them gybing along the coast. "It's just been a gybe-a-thon." Drone shot from before continues, showing Scallywag gybing to port. Audio has engine start (for keel ram hydros) and winches; I think it might actually be live audio recorded on the boat edited in with the drone footage. Which, if so; nice. Annemieke grinds. Closeup of a winch during what looks (from the wake out of focus in the background) like a gybe the other way (from port to starboard). Below, Alex talks about how his watch was lucky, because the gybing was mostly happening while they were on-watch. But the off-watch got basically no sleep at all. Slomo spray on deck. Washing machine. Below, John says, "Five days in Melbourne and everything seems rosy, and then you get back on board and go, Oh my God; what am I doing?" Talks about having missed off watches due to gybing. He preps some food, shows it to the camera. "Looks like baby food." He tries it. "Not too bad." Another drone shot of the gybe aftermath.Scallywag reaches on starboard tack with J1 and J3 in fairly flat water. TTToP is 1/4 miles away, ahead and to windward. I think this is probably from the afternoon of the first day of the race, around 2018.01.02 08:48:50 UTC, when they had exited Port Phillip Bay and were heading SE along the coast. Witty steers and wipes spray from his face; the low coastline is visible to leeward. Witty talks about what's coming up. "Scallywag's in reasonable shape." Points out the other boats around them. Washing machine shots in the cockpit. Shot of the stern with the sunset. Witty talks about strategy, not reacting to the other boats. But seeing the other boats around them is reassuring. "Pretty sure we're going the right way then." Shot of Libby with a tablet. Grant, panting: "I'm slightly out of breath from grinding. I've been pushing electric winch buttons for the last 15 years. It's much easier. But this does keep you warm." Witty: "Should have had full crew numbers from day one I think. Certainly makes it a lot easier. Trystan's a big strnog guy, which helps. Warry's been doing a good job driving, Libby seems to be a bit of a class act so far, so it's all good. Talk to you tomorrow. See where we are tomorrow. MIght change my mind!" Gybe in the cockpit. Shot of MAPFRE to leeward with the sunset behind them.Dim moonlight shot from the cabin of the cockpit as TTToP sails on starboard gybe. On deck, we see the crew stacking with the new-risen full moon ahead of them. Working on the stack, Bernardo talks about how with the moonlight it's helpful; almost need sunglasses. They can see what they're doing, see the swells for surfing. Shot of stars (planets?) low to the horizon to starboard. Shots of the moon. Bernardo: "Let's see for how many days we have this lucky and beautiful moon."Drone shot from close ahead as Brunel triple-heads on starboard gybe. Nice audio editing; I doubt it's true audio recorded onboard during the drone shots, but it's integrated nicely. A voice (I think Rome's?): "Little trim. Hold that." Drone shot from port quarter of Brunel surfing; as the drone circles astern we see TTToP a few hundred yards ahead and to weather. Closeup of Rome trimming. Kyle, on the stern, talks about TTToP: "Turn the Tide are two boatlenghts behind us. We're trying to fight them off. They rolled us on the gybe before, then we managed to sneak through to leeward of them. Now they've accelerated again and are threatening to roll us. Nice and close. We'd rather be at the front of the fleet, obviously. But we're battling it out for last place." Shot of the cockpit with TTToP chomping along in their wake. Slomo washing machine. TTToP surfing behind them. Rome, below, talks about being in the front pack at the beginning of the leg, but now they've fallen back a bit. Talks about TTToP interaction. Still in touch with the front of the fleet. He talks about how on other boats crews have sailed together for years. "Kind of learning as we go. Hopefully we get back in touch, and get back in the game." Shot of a gybe in the cockpit.Slomo spray, washing machine. Clear sky with low sun behind them. Shot of MAPFRE crossing ahead of them under cloudy skies. Dongfeng gybes from port to starboard. Justine grimaces as she grinds on the pedestal. Shots of MAPFRE ahead of them on port gybe; Vestas farther ahead of them on (I think) starboard gybe. Sunny washing machine shot of cockpit. Closeup of compass. Sunset spray. Charles at nav station, talks about the last 26 hours. "A bit fight against all the opponents. Speed, clouds, very interesting, very complicated. Lots of shifts. I think we are all exhausted. Now there is a big split." Three boats going offshore, rest going inshore. Sunset wake shot.MAPFRE is sailing fast on starboard gybe, triple-heading. On the aft pedestal, Támara talks in Spanish. Willy talks in Spanish. Támara talks more in Spanish. Blair talks with the coastline visible behind him: "VMG'd all night. All day today. Quite a few gybes actually. Very reminiscent of the ice gate, but slightly warmer here. Right by the coast." He talks about how the fleet has compressed. AkzoNobel caught up and passed everyone. They just passed Vestas. Shot of Vestas (I think?) inside them. Shot of AzkoNobel behind and to weather of them. Vestas crossing in front of them on starboard gybe, land visible behind them, while MAPFRE sails on port gybe. Shot from the cockpit as they gybe from starboard to port. Another gybe from the cockpit, this time from port to starboard. Closeups of grinding, winches. Pretty drone shot with MAPFRE on starboard gybe in the foreground, competitor (Vestas?) silhouetted by the low sun ahead of them.Awesome drone shot circling TTToP under (I think) A3 and J3 on starboard gybe. A headland with a lighthouse is behind them. From the Tracker that looks like Green Cape lighthouse, with Disaster Bay in the background, at 2018-01-03 0420 just after TTToP gybed to starboard. Drone shot following them on their starboard quarter as TTToP surfs.Slomo shot of washing machine cockpit with Brunel to leeward. Francesca, on the stern, with Brunel now behnid them to leeward. "If we have made some gains it is perfect. We will have time to sleep in the coming days. I think we need to push as hard as possible now." Slomo of Brunel just ahead of them and to windward. Dee, sitting behind Liz on the helm, talks about the competition. Dee: "The fact that they are that close, but more importantly that we can see all of the others makes it very exciting." Bleddyn leans out to run a line through the stern-rigged outrigger while someone else holds him by the waist; Brunel is visible to leeward. Brian T., leaning against the stack: "It's going well. We're within sight of every boat. Which is great after 24 hours of sailing... Everything you see on the video about how wet they are is totally true, Brian. They are soaking wet. But really nice, really strong boats. Really incredible sailing with the crew." Dee talks about the upcoming day. "When the other boats are this close nobody really cares about how tired they are about gybing."AkzoNobel is sailing upwind inside Port Phillip Bay on starboard. Nicho, on the stern, talks about how they couldn't hold their lane on port tack after the start. "Don't know. Not sure what happened. We were slow on port for a long time." Shot of their stern with a Bravo (protest) flag flying; other boats in the distance. Simeon below: "Yeah, we had a bit of a speed issue, yeah." Shots of crew moving the stack. Nicho: "It's not where you want to be... back of the pack... No use grumbling about it." Below, Nicolai and Simeon are looking through the window in the hull, talking about the prop. Maybe it wasn't folding properly? Brad looks through an inspection tool: "It's closed but it's got weed in it... Looks like I'm going over the side. Get a lot of heel on, and rip it off." Sam: "Would this explain the speed?" Brad: "Hopefully." On deck, Brad gets lowered over the weather side in his foulies with lines forward and aft; he goes down near the waterline to inspect. Cécile's back is in the foreground as she relays Brad's words, then helps him back on deck. Brad: "A bit of weed. Not as big as it looked. But it's closed. Nothing underwater slowing us down. So get into it." Later, on the stern, Sam asks Brad: "How's it feel to be in last place coming out of Australia?" Brad: "I hate to say, but we're used to it." Luke: "New Year's resolution? Probably just to win a few legs here." Martine: "I dunno. Just keep positive." Brad: "Not be last out of the next start. And start getting in front of the fleet." Rainbow in the boat's spray to leeward. Luke talks about the frustration of starting off in last or close to last. "People say you're unlucky, but you create your own luck." Talks about teamwork, they're a great group of sailors. Real rainbow to leeward; a competitor below and behind them. Simeon talks about them doing well in the last sched. "Zero to hero." First in the position reports. At the nav station, Jules talks about their performance. Sam: "How'd you manage to check back in with the fleet?" Jules: "Bit of luck, really. Guys have been sailing pretty hard all night. Everyone's been up pretty much most of the night. Gybed on a couple of shifts. Got a nice header for a while..." Talks about disappointment at the start, needing to hang in there. "If we go fast we'll be all right." Rainbow with Vestas, Dongfeng to leeward.Dockout as "Beautiful Day" plays. Witty on the helm. As they motor out Witty explains that Antonio broke his arm, so they got Trystan Seal to come in. Worked for the boatyard as part of the refit. Young UK guuy. We see him grinding a winch. Then he talks about how excited he is to be on the boat. He looks about 17. "You never know if you're going to like it or hate it until you do it. It should be good." In the background Libby is talking to Witty. Witty explains that Tom Clout "got quite sick", so he had to "call on an old mate, Grant Wharington, a bit of a yachting legend." We see Grant steering. Grant: "I'm really happy to have got a call up from David. He's an old mate of mine." We see Grant on the helm. Witty explains that Libby will help them be at full strength rather than being a person short. Shots of start with Witty on the helm and Libby talking to him. After the start, Witty talks about it. There was a 20-degree pin bias and they tried to do a port-tack start, which was tough. But it's all good. He jokes about getting rid of the jumper, who we then see jump off.At the nav station, Dee talks about deciding whether or not to gybe. Most of the boats have headed offshore. Brian [Thompson] has gone on deck to look at how things are. We see Brian talking to Dee through the companionway. "It's just silly to go this way." Dee wakes up people below: "Time to gybe." Liz: "I love the gybing what do you mean I don't like the gybing I love the gybing." Dee, at the nav station, talks about how it's harder to be with everybody rather than sailing on their own. But it's good; morning two and they're with the whole fleet.Capey in the cockpit at (I think) the start; a woman's voice is counting down on a radio. We see a closeup of Rome's face looking forward; behind him we see Kyle, who's calling mainsail trim, I think: "Little build here. Give me a little twist." Closeup of Abby looking over her shoulder at Scallywag. Now we see Kyle on the aft pedestal. He calls to Sally: "Leeward trav! Leeward trav! Sally? Leeward traveler!" Closeup of Kyle's face as he stacks. Shot of MAPFRE ahead and to leeward of them. Kyle: "Doing really well on Scallywag and Akzo. Vestas is okay. Tiny bit higher than the guys behind us. Good mode though." He explains the start to Yann: "The start was okay. We were a little bit behind, started on port and had to duck the fleet. So started off behind, but then we got a nice shift. Currently in third place, pretty close to Vestas. So it was a pretty good start." Below, Kyle pulls off his foulies. Rome talks about getting "firehosed" setting up the strut going 20 knots. "Other than that it was good. Going well." Slomo shots of Rome getting firehosed setting up the outrigger. In-the-action washing-machine shots by Yann near the mast. Dongfeng visible to leeward. Below, Sally talks about being back on the boat. "It feels like coming home. I was telling Abby; everything's set up just the same. Like riding a bicycle." Talks about start tactics, and the race since then. "It's intense. A new team, so you have to stay on your toes and pay attention, but yeah. A good time." On deck we see Dongfeng (I think?) ahead of them and to leeward.Night shot of the cockpit. Crew on the pedestal grinding with red headlamps on while the full moon illuminates clouds and the ocean behind them. Another boat can be seen a hundred yards away on their port side; TTToP gybes. Looks like the gybe they made around 1445 on 2018-01-02, which would mean that's Scallywag next to them. We see Scallywag sailing in the moonlight on their port side. On their starboard quarter we see what I think is South West Island with a light on it (FL 4 sec?).Lightly attended dockout parade. Motoring out, Xabi talks while steering. Pretty sure he misspeaks, saying, "we're starting Leg 4 from Melbourne to Auckland" (rather than Hong Kong). Happy with how things are going, and with the crew. Only team not changing the crew. There's a shot of Joan at the nav station with a bunch of crew hovering behind him as he explains something. Then (weirdly) the audio cuts out as the video continues. Then we see the dockout from the deck. Rob, on deck, says he's surprised at the number of crew changes happening. Their aim was to keep the same crew as much as they could. Xabi, on the wheel, says he hopes their time sailing together can give them an advantage. Shots of the start. After the start, Louis stacks the J3 forward. Shot of Brunel ahead of them and to leeward. Sophie shifting the stack to leeward. Slomo spray. Epic spray on the bow engulfing Louis. Vestas ahead of them and to leeward as they reach down the coast. Willy in slomo spray.Internal stacking. Liz explains they had to sail upwind to Mornington, and now have to sail out of Port Phillip Bay. Slomo spray. Decided to peel to the J2, but then decided to stay with the J1. Had a big sea state against the tide ocming out the entrance. "It's been like a washing machine." She talks about Scallywag and AkzoNobel behind them to weather, and points out "Straya".Dongfeng sailing upwind on port tack with the J1 inside Port Phillip. Looks like this is the final tack toward the exit from Port Phillip, so the boats ahead of them are (right to left, that is, near to far) Brunel, MAPFRE, and Vestas. Crew shifts the stack to leeward, meaning they're coming up on their tack to starboard. Outrigger is rigged forward, so presumably it will be a reach after they tack. Next they're on starboard reaching. Spray. Someone's hat blows off. Slomo spray. Brunel close ahead to leeward. Then they appear to be abeam. Slomo with sunset.Dee, motoring out on the helm, talks about how their problem is they start well, then lose out, then maintain. So they just need to eliminate that part where they lose out. Brian [Thompson, navigator], referring to handwritten notes, talks to the crew in the cockpit about the start of the leg. Sailing past other boats in the prestart. Sailing upwind after the start. On the rail, Annalise recaps the start: at the committee boat, a little conservative, but other boats messed up, so pretty nice. "So far so good! [makes a thumbs up] A long way to go, though." Elodie, with a scopolamine patch behind her ear, talks about the start, their current situation. Dongfeng sailing close to them. Francesca trims, talks about Brunel.Departure parade past sparse Melbourne crowd. They pull out to "Uptown Funk." Horace waves a Chinese flag. He talks about starting the leg on which his is going home. Says something in Chinese and makes a "Number One" gesture. Jack talks about how quickly the stopover went; only had a week in Melbourne. They talk with the jumper on the stern. Has an Aussie accent? Talks about meeting the team in person. A bit bigger than the 470 he's used to. Shot of them sailing upwind. Frank, ahead of Charles on the wheel, checks a tablet and talks to Charles in French. Footage of the start from onboard. Frank and Charles talking. Shot of them doing their 270 penalty turn (for a port-starboard infraction of AkzoNobel, per Dongfeng's website). Horace on the rail talks about the penalty. Tacking through the fleet.