No matter how devious the mystery, and violent the detail, no alert reader of "The House of Silk" will be able to spend more than a half-dozen pages in its company without wanting to laugh.

WSJ: Book Review: The House of Silk

It stayed away from a high pressure zone with light winds off Nova Scotia, and built up a big enough lead to withstand the challenge from Silk Cut which was in the right place to benefit from the conditions in the second half of the leg.

BBC: Leg Eight: Toshiba snatches victory

Doede, who chairs the private equity AIG Silk Road Fund, spent an average of a week a month for four and a half years looking for "a neglected opportunity" in the politically and economically dicey part of the world stuck between Russia to the north, China to the east and Iran and Pakistan to the south.

FORBES: Silk Road Strategies