I don't know how many of you guys follow this stuff, but leg one is over: Alicante to Cape Town. Only three out of six boats finished the leg. Two of the three boats that did not finish did not make it through the first night. Two boats were dis-masted. The American entry, Puma, lost its rig while reaching along in 23 knots of wind, which is really hard to understand. One of the links below is for the Volvo Race youtube channel. There is a good video about leg one (nearly an hour long, but a nice way to spend a Sunday morning). However, the video does not explain how you lose a rig on an ocean racing sailboat in 23 knots of breeze (they also don't say much about how the Chinese boat got a big hole in their bow during the first night). With a fairly small (apparently fragile) fleet, and three teams having to endure the cost of shipping their boats to Cape Town on freighters to be ready for leg 2, it is hard to imagine how more than a couple of boats finish all the legs of this race. Leg two should be fun: right up the friendly coast of eastern Africa to the Abu Dhabi! Yeah, nothing could go wrong there. Links are below:

http://www.youtube.com/user/volvooceanracevideos
http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/home.html