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Where is the Cape of Good Hope? | Volvo Ocean Race 2014-15 – Volvo Ocean Race

I enjoyed this video of Eric Peron and Thomas Rouxel of Dongfeng having fun around Cape Town. Especially the part where Eric is tricked into kissing his paraglider pilot, it struck me as an interesting datapoint in the whole gender-and-cultural-differences-across-crews thing I was babbling about the other day.

But mostly it just looked like fun.

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Wolf and Leo, then and now

I kind of ship it. Not in the usual sense. But just, you know, as awesomely cool Chinese sailing bros.

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Damage on Dongfeng | Volvo Ocean Race 2014-15 – Volvo Ocean Race

So, if you happen to have been obsessively running the tracker app backwards and forwards to judge relative speeds on the lead boats, and if you happen to have noticed that Dongfeng’s speed dipped significantly for a short time after 1800 UTC yesterday, this is the explanation. The attachment point for a block where the largest headsail’s sheet makes an acute angle at the back of the boat gave way. That made the sheet snap forward, taking out the lifelines and a chunk of the starboard steering wheel.

Fortunately no one was standing in the angle when that happened. Chinese crewmember Horace was standing closest; it’s interesting to watch his (non-)reaction in the video.

In a posting on the team’s Facebook page they said they lost about 5 miles in the 30 minutes it took to get the headsail sheeted in again, and that there’s a slight impact in terms of being inefficiently sheeted on the port gybe. From the tracker, it looks like they’re doing just fine; they’re still trailing ADOR, but not by much.

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I love this video from yesterday on Dongfeng. Whee! We’re in the Roaring Forties.

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Martin Strömberg of Dongfeng Race Team, October 31, 2014. Source.

This is the first footage I’ve seen from the lead boats since they got into the good wind last night. I love Martin Strömberg just casually continuing with the interview as he gets smacked in the face. It’s his third Volvo; maybe he’s used to it.

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Dongfeng Race Team navigator Pascal Bidégorry watches a surprise video.

As of October 23, 2014, Dongfeng is in fourth place during Leg 1 of the 38,000-mile Volvo Ocean Race.

Source.

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