Amory Ross (OBR)

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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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."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.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."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.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.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.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.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."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.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.