Welcome to what must be one of the most intense legs in Volvo Ocean Race history. As it stands, (1900 UTC) and according to our live tracker, Dongfeng Race Team are just managing to fend off MAPFRE by 0.6 nautical miles.
After a mark rounding in the City of Aarhus, we could hardly believe how close the two leading boats were. Take a look at the live coverage from our helicopter and Naill Myant-Best live from the dock below.
Live Replay - Aarhus Fly-By: Part One | Volvo Ocean RaceLive Replay - Aarhus Fly-By: Part Two | Volvo Ocean Race
To read the latest updates coming in thick and fast from our editorial team, you can visit the Volvo Ocean Race homepage at www.volvooceanrace.com.
This race is known for raw emotion and nothing could sum the Aarhus Fly-By up better than this picture of Jena Mai Hansen as Vestas 11th Hour Racing entered her home port to round the mark in 3rd place to thousands of fans cheering. Congratualtions to Jeremie Lecaudey for capturing the moment.
© Jeremie Lecaudey/Volvo Ocean Race
It's been hard to pick the best content to go into today's Daily Digest. We have three teams in deat heat for the overall win, a fierce Dutch battle between Team Brunel and team AkzoNobel to beat each other into The Hague, a match race of epic proportions for the lead between Dongfeng Race Team and MAPFRE... and to top it off, a ferocious battle at the back of the fleet between Turn the Tide on Plastic and Team SHK/Scallywag. Who is your money on?
When Xabi Fernandez stepped onto the dock in Gothenburg, the first thing he said was that Team Brunel had found another gear from somewhere. Judging from the tweet below it's looking like the team are preapring to put that magic gear in motion.
We've had a difficult day?. The red boats sneaked away and are about 20 miles ahead of us. Time for some Team Brunel magic! #teambrunel pic.twitter.com/lUagF4d3R8
— BrunelSailing (@brunelsailing) June 22, 2018
Usually our sailors slip into a 4-hours-on, 4-hours-off sleeping pattern but this short and intense leg is taking them to new levels of exhaustion where sleeping is not an option. The caption to this picture from Onboard Reporter Rich Edwards is 'Lucas Chapman takes five'. That's five minutes sleep in 24 hours? Ouch.
© Rich Edwards/Volvo Ocean Race
On the water it's full on so we've got a little sneak peak behind the scenes of the Gothenburg stopover that will lighten your stress levels slightly... here is episode 15 of Gybe Talking.
Volvo Ocean Race Gybe Talking – Episode 15, Gothenburg
Finally, if you don't want to miss a thing and watch history in the making - follow our Race Experts on Twitter.
13:00 UTC Position Report. @desafioMAPFRE have closed the gap a little on the approach to the Aarhus rounding mark which they should round in the next 20 minutes. #Watchlog pic.twitter.com/wpZgXs74yn
— Race Experts (@RaceExperts) June 22, 2018
Special thanks to Inmarsat for enabling us to keep everyone in the loop with the onboard content!
