The Volvo Ocean race continues to amaze the world with their on board footage and up-to-the-minute race progress reports on social media. This week the team from Dongfeng suffered a little tear in their Code Zero – and the repair is spectacular.

While most racing teams would simply drop a headsail to repair it, the team from Dongfeng Racing didn’t want to lose precious seconds using an inferior sail. They instead pulled crew member Eric Peron up on a halyard to repair it mid-air, 100ft above the bouncing deck of the boat, being thrown around all over the place, he managed to patch it up without a single second of downtime. Later when the sail wasn’t required, they dropped it and did a ‘proper’ repair on the deck, with a special glue and a patch.

Of course it wouldn’t be the Volvo Ocean race without some spectacular drone footage from the Ocean 65’s, so rather than snap a pic of poor old Eric up the mast, they launched the drone and buzzed around the boat for a while. Thanks to the light winds (anything sub 15 knots) the drones can be launched and landed right from the decks of the boats.

Watch the amazing drone footage of the Volvo Ocean 65 Dongfeng Racing having a sail repaired while sailing, right here.

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