As Mange Mieux approached the finish line we could just see the second place yacht Bull Rush on the horizon. The wind was gusting 25 knots and the entrance to Noumea harbour had a swift little chop making it difficult to manoeuvre our dinghy into position to take the sphere image. This time I had the 7 GoPros set to fire a burst of 10 images in one second - which meant we would only get one shot because the cameras needed about 10 seconds to recover before taking another. And in 10 seconds Mange Mieux would be too far away for a second shot.

Just as the yacht passed us the wake from a spectator power boat hit the dinghy and the camera rig on the end of the 4 meter long pole tilted drastically. I took the shot anyway even though the cameras were moving fast. I was sure it would not be any good. As it turns out the burst technique worked great and although the horizon in the images is nearly 45 degrees from horizontal Autopano Giga stitched the image perfectly. The images were only about 0.2 to 0.4 seconds out of synch so the 10 shots per second burst captured the exact same moment in all of the frames. Even the top of the mast of the sailboat was lined up perfectly.

The 7 GoPro Sphere rig works on burst mode. This was a good test. The wave chop, 25 knot winds, spectator boat wakes, and the fast moving yacht just a few meters away from the dinghy required a very exact synchronization between the 7 cameras.