DAY 22 - Club Med Clears the Continent, Heads into the Indian Ocean
News - Saturday, 01/21/2001, 5:33 AM GMT

Position	01/21/2001 5:33 AM GMT
1st	Club Med (Stretching lead in Indian Ocean, avg speed 21.9 knots)
2nd	Team Adventure (792 nm from the leader. Speeding towards Cape Town, avg speed 17.7 knots)
3rd	Innovation Explorer (916 nm from the leader. Assumed role as nearest challenger, avg speed 20.0 knots)
4th	Warta Polpharma (2462 nm from leader. Good speed East, avg speed 18.6 knots)
5th	Team Legato (3146 nm from the leader. Narrowing the gap to Warta, avg speed 12.7 knots)
6th	PlayStation (6014 nm from the leader. RETIRED, Pulling into Antigua, avg speed 8.3 knots)

On the NOW Race Tracker you can really see how Club Med has moved north, to protect herself from the wild conditions. She is south of Cape of Good Hope, clearing the continent.

Innovation Explorer has now taken the 2nd place position as Team Adventure heads north into Cape Town, South Africa.

Team Adventure: The wave collision damaged a bulkhead in the crossbeam and about two square meters/21.53 sq ft of the hull fairing, which is part of the structure for taking the torsional loads. The bulkhead will need to be rebonded and some of the core material replaced, before the fairing is replaced.

Grant Dalton, on Club Med: "Our boat is completely different to theirs' structurally in this area. We have 24 more ring frames in the forward beam fairing than they do. On top of that we have used a foam core as opposed to Nomex paper honeycomb. We really were convinced that we needed to put extra strength in some areas of the boat that we had found to be wanting initially. It is as a result of the thousands of miles that we sailed with the boat last summer that we learnt about some of these potential weaknesses."

Dalton: "Yesterday, we sailed in 35-45 knots all day, and, as the day progressed, the seas just got bigger and bigger. We eventually took the spinnaker down and sailed with just a deep-reefed mainsail through the night".

"The boats are just so fast and so powerful that the water creates such huge force. We’ve had a second rip in the net".

From the NOW live tracker, www.now.com

Innovation Explorer is in turqoise Club Med in yellow Team Adventure is green

PlayStation is in red Warta is orange Team Legato is blue

Innovation Explorer: "The wind has been back since yesterday afternoon," said Loïck Peyron. "We have 30 knots of wind at the moment and we've all sails set at the moment, full main, big gennaker and staysail".

Innovation Esplorer is heading into an area where a current called the Agulhas Current, which flows southwest, clashes with the prevailing southeasterly swell. The resulting confused seas are very difficult to negotiate.

The crew spent the two days drifting in the high, engaged in a massive sail repair job which has consumed the vast majority our sail repair kit - not needles and thread, but gallons of contact cement, Sika Flex and sticky back Dacron and Kevlar, with barely a stitch taken.

This sail is now highly suspect in strong winds, so the already meager sail inventory is looking very threadbare.

From the NOW live tracker, www.now.com

Warta Polpharma is in the Saint Helena high.

From the NOW live tracker, www.now.com

Team Legato, now speeding south through the south east Trades, is working towards a straight route towards the powerful downwind conditions of the Southern Ocean. They have gained 70 miles on Warta Polpharma today.

Team Legato is nearing the end of the doldrums with more reasonable easterly breezes on offer on the northern edge of the high, giving the opportunity to take the Brazilian Ocean Current due south.

PlayStation to Antigua - heading for Miami has programmed a halt in Antigua in the Caribbean.

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