Fabien Delahaye / Dongfeng Race Team

gender Male
Crew lying down below: Fabien, Justine (maybe?). Hard to tell in their gear. Maneuver on deck (sail change?); working in the pit. Chalres on the helm. Land to starboard. Jack, below: As standard as we thought it was going to be, it's close and stressful. Brunel was quite a bit back in the morning, and they've been quite fast and they've come back into us. I think MAPFRE's about 2 miles ahead and Brunel's about 1 mile ahead. Pretty close, pretty stressful. We're around the north end of the course and on to Gothenburg. Coming around the island all the boats had a different sail setup... think Brunel has done the best. Long night ahead. Spreader cam and mast cam shots of pounding on a close reach, shifting the stack.Washing machine. Sailing fast on starboard gybe. Spreader cam view of Jack (I think?) on the bow. Foredeck work in anticipation of a sail change. Slomo washing machine in the pit. Spreader cam view of cockpit during a peel. Grinding. Slomo washing machine. Jack (I think) on the bow as the old sail comes down. Folding the sail in firehose on the foredeck. Kevin grinning in slomo. Carolijn takes off her gear below. "The joys of peeling in 27 knots... Just a lot of water. Peeling from the masthead to the J0." Fabien takes off his gear; comments on being wet inside it.Brunel sailing alongside as they move into new wind after the ridge. Other boats on the horizon. Charles gestures gallicly. Drone shot showing Dongfeng with Brunel in the background. Drone shots. Binnacle. Kevin on the helm. Pascal looks through binoculars and talks in French. Jack and Pascal look around, tense. Pascal: Nothing's for sure... Next is to catch the pressure and to gybe. Quite good timing, because starboard we're going to catch more pressure, maybe 30 knots. We will see. Jack: No comment, no comment. Pascal: I'm a bit afraid the pressure comes in like that (gestures from astern) and everybody... Pressure is coming in quite fast now. Drone shots of Dongfeng and Brunel. Charles on the helm. Stacking from forward to amidships. Brunel gybes and crosses their stern. Charles and Pascal talk in French. Kevin, on the helm: Brunel just gybed behind us. MAPFRE quite a lot of gauge to leeward, so they will be in front of us. Wind will increase, 30 knots. Going inside the Shetlands tomorrow. Now we have to be fast, do good maneuver, catch MAPFRE. Plenty of opportunities to be fast, choose the good sail. Most of the navigation choices have been made; now it's a speed contest. Drone shot overhead. Drone shots. Stacking to leeward for the gybe. We see the gybe. Fabien and Black grinding. Carolijn calls trim.Drifting conditions near the Irish coast. Jack: I don't think we're making too much headway on the land. Other boats visible behind them, including Brunel. Drifting. J1 flopping. Fabien: I don't know if we are lucky, but we are ahead of the fleet since the beginning. But now we are in the light spot, with Brunel and MAPFRE behind... We are very close to the shore, with no wind. Expect northeast wind at the corner, which is one mile. But we have no wind with current. It's not easy. Charles looks under the sail at Brunel and mutters. Shore is just a few hundred yards away. Tacking the MH0. Pascal talks with Charles in French. Charles on the helm. Intensity. Sailing with more wind, tacking the J1. Brunel and MAPFRE to starboard. Another tack. Sailing toward land in the sunset. Charles and Pascal. Jack on the helm. Charles talks with Pascal in French. Charles: Okay we tack. Pascal: Tacking guys! They tack. Black on the rail. Vestas crossing them. Crossing MAPFRE. Another tack next to the shore. Carolijn trims, moves to pedestal: Someone come with me please? Later, Carolijn: Vestas is coming upright. Much less breeze. Coming back into the breeze now. Sunset. Black comes up from below. Daryl on the helm. AkzoNobel crosses behind them. Another boat ahead of them.Drone shot of dophins swimming with land in the background, then drone turns to show Dongfeng triple heading in light wind. Kevin on the helm; his left hand is wrapped with a bandage. Justine trimming. Jack: It's a nice spot to be in... After the start got some good current and passed the fleet. Next transition is the south of Ireland. Do everything we can to work through that. Don't think about it and just move forward. Charles climbs the mast to look ahead and to starboard (looking for wind, I assume). Justine grinds. Charles and Fabien look at wind. Stacking forward. Daryl clips into a halyard, explains he's going up to look at the wind. Talks about the land formations ahead of them and the anticipated wind drop. Kevin grins in the pit; they hoist him up. Drone shot of Daryl at the hounds. He calls to the deck. Drone pulls back to show land beyond dthem. Justine and Carolijn talking in the cockpit. Tacking close to shore. Other boats visible on the horizon behind them as they tack. Carolijn: Nice pressure here. Land. Low altitude drone shot.Drifting start. Other boats. Fabien looks at other boats. Kevin on teh foredeck. Sailing past TTToP on starboard. Unrolling the MH0. Tacking. Kevin: Not a very good start. Very light wind. We are quite good; we went in the shadow of three boats. So we've lost a lot and a lot to gain. Very light during the night... Have to do our best to take the lead back before the end of the bay.We see the cabin. Kevin is looking down in the hull on the port side of the galley; Fabien and Pascal watch him. Kevin says something in French. Shots of 6 inches of water sloshing around on the port side of the cabin, just in front of the hatch. Fabien explains something to Martin in French; I'm picking up "boat" and "keel". Kevin: "We have a problem with the keel. I don't know exactly why. At this time we want to do a fitting, to change the sail. And Pascal [something] to tell that we had plenty of water and oil in the boat... I hope it is not a problem with the keel ram attached to the boat." Shot of them pumping water out; shot of the port keel ram with water flooding in around its forward end. Jack explains that the port keel ram, which pushes the keel from side to side, where it attaches to the boat the hull fitting has cracked. So a lot of water came into the boat, and they've lost the oil from the ram system. Have turned off the port ram and put oil back into the starboard ram. On deck, Black explains. Below, Kevin operates a hand-held drill pump (adding oil to starboard ram?). He explains that the system is designed to work with only one ram. Below, Charles and Kevin talk in French, and use the starboard ram to operate the keel. Charles, at nav station, explains that they've fixed it, but have lost 10-15 miles and are now close to Vestas and Brunel. He has looked at the routing, and it is helping the fleet catch up. He's hoping they don't lose second place. "We deserve second place."Below, Kevin talks about being tired. "With my watch partner Carolijn Brouwer we have been 12 hours on deck - 14, 2 more. Lots of gybes along the ice limit. Now we are getting more pressure, sea state." Now 2 hours of rest before being back on deck, then one very important gybe before heading north for Australia. Carolijn: "I think I have to admit I'm pretty tired now. All the action on deck seems to happen when Kevin and I are off watch. But it's part of the job and you ahve to get it done. It's part of the race." In the Southern Ocean it's harder because of getting dressed and undressed. "When you do that every 2 hours it gets a bit frustrating. In other legs it's much less a problem... There's a lot more layers coming on than otherwise.... Have to push really hard. The guys on MAPFRE have done really well." Fabien talks in French. Black talks about normal life on board. Having to be ready. Eating a lot of food with no rice (?). Pascal talks in French.Cabin shot of the stern with Dongfeng sailing fast under gray skies. Slomo waves, spray, washing machine. Of the three on the stern, in closeup it looks like Marie grinding. She makes a shaka sign. On the helm, Fabien eats something orange. On the mainsheet, Stu looks resolute; starts to eat something. Below, Charles takls about the remainder of the leg. Five days to go, 2,000 miles. Two big decisions: first one tonight, second one in two days, when they decide to go north to go to Melbourne. That will be the key probably. For the moment, strongest point of Dongfeng, reaching. MAPFRE was quite fast downwind. "I would say that 80-90% of the race now is downwind. Unfortunately it's not the big reaching. I think everyone is happy to be ahead of MAPFRE, but everybody knows that they are not far... We will do it but for sure it will be a great fight.... As you know it is a very important leg... To be first is good but it's always a lot of pressure." Shot of writing on a Dongfeng bumper sticker on the cabin bulkhead: "Never give up. - Wolf" On the stern, Marie throws bits of food for the person trimming the main (Stu?) to catch in his mouth. He succeeds; they high-five.Hgh speed wake shot. Stern cam of surfing in very high winds. Pascal at the nav station. Fabien, below, talks about how they're approaching the ice limit. Will need to do some gybes to stay in the pressure. Bow cam of Dongfeng surfing. Mast cam of cockpit during gybe. Stern cam of the end of the gybe. Looked good. Marie, below, talks about how on deck it's a washing machine. Have to grab the pedestal to stay onboard. Life jacket, clipped in. "I hope the wind will decrease a bit." "We are still ahead... But the three last days are very difficult for me." Sunset washing machine shot of stern. Closeups of pit from inside cabin. Winches, spray. Water cascading into the cockpit.Kevin (yay!) on the deckhouse gathers the main as they reef it. Below, Marie talks to Kevin while Jack puts on his foulie top. Kevin, to Martin: "Good weather to be back. Good weather to start the new leg." Talks about strategy. "We are the first to tack to be back inshore... Second place, I think. Just in front of MAPFRE and just behind Brunel." He talks about how they have 35 knots of wind, which you can hear howling in the rigging. Says it should decrease all night, and a reach tomorrow morning. He goes on deck. Marie, below, talks about the conditions. Sunny, should have a good sunset with the Cape of Good Hope, a bit bumpy. "I had last night a filet of beef with french fries. It was awesome." Talks about the good fresh food they still have. PBJ. Sunset behind them. See them coming in toward shore beating on starboard tack, shifting the stack to leeward in preparation for tacking. MAPFRE ducks them on port SUPER close; whoa! Slomo of the duck. Below, Fabien changes out of his foulies, talks wiht Martin about how he's completely wet. Up to 40 knots at times, he says.