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And it's all about teamwork, so you have to make sure that you've got the right group together. How did you know that that core group was made up of the right people?

Leslie DeMeuse: "A lot of what we asked on the application was about character, questions that would get us inside their heads about who they were and would they be a good teammate. And a lot of interviews we did with them for pre-screening were, 'Well, how would you deal with this situation and what would you do?' It really gave us a great idea of which 30 we had to try out.

And then it's just watching them, how they dealt with each other during the trials."

Piet van Os: "They didn't tell us what they were looking for so it was all nerve-wracking."

Roy Disney: "We had a group of, I guess, seven of us that were judges in Long Beach when they brought the 30 to Long Beach, and we spent a week with them. Plus we had an acting coach who's sort of a team building expert who came and spent three days I guess with you."

Piet van Os: "That's right."

Roy Disney: "And got all of his input from watching them and giving them little exercises to do. Like, he'd blindfold half of them and make the other half take the blindfolded ones out. They'd learn to trust each other as a twosome. So we got a lot of input back from Bill from that, and all the judges went sailing with them every day. They watched the interactions."

Leslie DeMeuse: "Sailing was less as important as the character, because we knew we could train them. What you can't train somebody is on your character and how you deal with life and situations."

How many applications came in originally?

Roy Disney: "450."

Leslie DeMeuse: "And actually it was in a short period of time. We only opened it up for applications for a four-week span. I mean, we just were getting so many and we thought, 'Oh-oh, stop this.'"

Roy Disney: "I have to say, the age was for people between 18 and 22 basically, so we did have one from a 41 year old guy who said, 'I don't care what your requirement is, I want to go."

Why did you pick that age range?

Leslie DeMeuse: "It's a difficult time in your life, when you're a young adult, you know? For me, when I was young, it just made such an impact. We knew it was such a tender, or not tender but a pivotal point in their lives that that is something that they can carry with them. And they're so fresh and new, and to experience all this and, that's the biggest transformation, is during that age."

Is the goal of the movie to get more people interested in sailing in general?

Roy Disney: "It would certainly be a wonderful sight to see, but it wasn't the basic goal. The basic goal was to see what happens to people in situations like this and whether it was climbing a mountain or sailing a boat across the ocean or hiking across the desert together, but having to do it as a group and only being able to succeed if you are a group and a team. That was what it was about, and about the character development that goes with that. We're trying to make sure that people who aren't sailors understand they will see something that applies to their own lives."

Leslie DeMeuse: "We could have done this film on any sport, it just happened to be sailing. But it’s the same. It's showing how a team can work together."

Roy Disney: "But it is one of the few sports that's a team sport where the team goes out and is absolutely on its own, isolated from all the other teams. And the only time they know where their competition is, is once a day at roll calls when they get the latitude and longitude and positions. Then you know what yours is and you say, 'Well we're gaining on them, we're losing to them,' and that's it. The rest of the time you're competing really against your own imagination in a way."

Piet van Os: "This works for you and against you sometimes."

So it was really unusually to see another boat?

Roy Disney: "Extremely."

Piet van Os: "We were exactly, almost exactly, in the middle of the Pacific. I mean a thousand miles in either direction you got land, and here we are with another boat less than 50 feet away from us."

Leslie DeMeuse: "You know it's interesting, a lot of people ask Piet, 'Did you get really involved in conflicts?' You know, you're stuck on this boat and…"

Piet van Os: "First of all, you don't really have time. You're so busy with everything going. We didn’t have time or room for any conflicts because whatever conflicts happened slowed us down. That makes the process longer to get to Hawaii. We obviously want to win and do well and get there fast, so we worked together and just put everything else aside. That's the best combination."

How long did it take you to feel like you were part of a team?

Piet van Os: "It's interesting. It happened so much faster than I thought it would, because we’re all from very different backgrounds. But I think, for me, it definitely wasn't the first section. I think it was about halfway through the end of the second session. And by the third session, we were fully a team here."

Even though you're actually competing against these same people for a spot in the final group?

Piet van Os: "But the thing I've been telling people about selection trials and just through the whole project, in sailing it's a team sport and if you try and take the approach of, 'I'm going to put this person down to make myself successful,' it makes you look awful. It makes everybody look awful. But if you try and work to help this guy succeed, it makes everybody better and it makes you look good. So it's the exact opposite of these reality shows where they try to pull people off or put them down."

Leslie DeMeuse: "I think reality shows are unreal. I don't know why they call them reality shows. They're contrived. There is nothing contrived about this."

Roy Disney: "The truth is our show is a reality. It's real and the others are fake reality."

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