The first video is their promotional video. In a flurry of fast-cut editing, one can get a glimpse of a year's worth of adventure trimmed down to three minutes. You can find this short video right here or watch it below.
The second video, nine minutes long, bears a bit of introduction and background. It chronicles one boat's voyage on one leg ; from Qingdao, China across the northern Pacific (in March!) to Victoria, Canada.
The vessle being filmed was the sailboat sponsored by the city of Victoria. Each of the ten boats in this race has a city sponsoring it and each of those cities (with a few exceptions) hosts a stop on the race. At that point in the ten year history of this race, no boat had ever won the leg leading to it's home port.
This Qingdao-Victoria leg was not only the longest, it was the most difficult one in terms of conditions and weather as well. To understand this, I'll offer a short course on navigation.
Over long distances, such as one travels in oceans or in the air, the shortest distance between two points direct east or west of each other is not always directly east or west. The actual shortest route is called the Great Circle. The illustration below shows why.
These two points in Russia and Canada are both on the 70th Parallel. You could reach either one from the other by heading due east or west (red line). It's clear, however, that the shortest route between them is the green line. Only on the equator is the it quickest to go east and west to any point sharing the same latitude. The further north you go, the more the great circle route arcs to the north (or to the south in the southern hemisphere). Click on either of theses images for a larger version to clarify these points, if necessary.With this in mind, one can see that the shortest route (red line) between Quindao and Victoria (once one is past Japan) arcs further north than one might first imagine.
To prevent any boat from venturing too far north into areas known to have icebergs, the race office mandated a waypoint south of the Aleutian Islands (yellow thumbtack), which then made the shortest route the yellow line. The blue line is the actual route taken by Victoria, venturing a bit north at first in search of the best winds, dropping down to make the waypoint, then heading directly for Victoria.
This, then, was an incredibly grueling leg for all of last year's participants.* As you'll see in the video, it starts off simple enough in China in cool but not terribly unreasonable weather. As the voyage progresses and the route heads north, the conditions become challenging, to say the least. I'll leave it to you to discover as you watch the video.
One final note; Victoria broke what had come to be known as the home port curse. Towards the end, as they closed on Victoria, the winds died altogether. They then limped across the finish line in the final scene, slowly, but still in first place.
You'll find this nine minute video here or just watch it below.
*For the '07-'08 edition, we have an Hawaiian stop between Qingdao and Victoria.
