The Volvo Ocean Race is a yacht race around the entire world. It is held every three years and generally takes approximately 9 months to complete. Each boat has a crew of 9, who race 24 hours a day for up to 20 days at a time, living off of freeze-dried food and raw courage. It isn’t a race for the weak or faint of heart.

This incredible LEGO model was built by Johan Sahlstrom, who works for Volvo, and Anders Christensen, who works for LEGO. After deciding to build a model of the Volvo Ocean Race boats, they chose Team SCA, the first all-female crew in over 10 years, because “Team SCA is definitely the coolest looking”, according to Sahlstrom.

The SCA boat is 2 1/2 meters long and 3 1/2 meters tall, using over 100,000 pieces. It includes fully functional halyards, winches, grinding pedestals and a canting keel. It is completely to scale, took over 1200 man-hours to build and uses no glue. Creating it was a quite the feat in and of itself!