Legendary boats from seven of the 13 round the world races have gathered in Gothenburg in preparation for a race between the Swedish stopover port of the Volvo Ocean Race, to the Dutch port of The Hague, the finish destination for the current round-the-world race.

Maxim Van Pelt from Elvstrøm Sails Benelux was on the Ocean Breeze, formerly known as Telefónica Blue 2008-09. You can read more on these astonishing boats here.

Photo: Maxim Van Pelt steering, credit: Laurens Morel

Maxim reports from the head of Denmark: "We had 9.3kns of True Wind speed and a 11kns of boat speed. Later that night we had around 35kns of true wind speed. Boat speed was between 22 and 26kns.  We had a peak of 31kns.
At that time we were sailing with the J-2 and 2 reefs in the main. We became 2nd over the line after the modified VO70 Trifork that was sailing with foils."

Elvstrøm Sails has just recently designed a 320 m2 mast-head EPEX Code Zero, and more sails are coming up. Some photo’s of the Code-0 taken during the Volvo Ocean Legend Race at the head of DK. (Near Skagen). And a few photos from the loft of the sails coming up.