DAY 44 - Team Adventure will Stop In Wellington. Innovation Explorer Passage of Cape Horn Will Not be as Bad as Expected. Will Team Legato Finish in 125% of The Race Winner's Time?
News - Monday, 02/12/2001, 6:57 AM GMT

Position	02/12/2001 6:57 AM GMT
1st	Club Med (6601 nm from finish. Sailing under the Falklands, heading for Marseille, avg speed 22.3 knots)
2nd	Innovation Explorer (845 nm from the leader. Cape Horn passage will not be as bad as anticipated, avg speed 23.7 knots)
3rd	Team Adventure (5415 nm from leader. Making her way across Tasman Sea in light winds, will stop in Wellington, avg speed 7.1 knots)
4th	Warta Polpharma (6157 nm from the leader. Has put more distance on Team Legato, avg speed 15.8 knots)
5th	Team Legato (7197 nm from the leader. Passed Cape Leeuwin, avg speed 14.8 knots)
6th	PlayStation DNF

Note: NOW Launch Tracker is having problems currently.

Club Med Grant Dalton is sailing under the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) on a course due northeast. They will leave the archipelago to port. After confronting a spell of light airs, they'll be able to take better advantage of steady southeasterlies of about 20 knots along the coast of Argentina. With sheets eased, they'll make rapid progress toward Brazil.

Innovation Explorer has finally gybed and set a course southeast. They're running dead downwind along the coast of Chile to get as close to the Horn as possible but once they reach the latitude of Cape Horn will no doubt gybe again in order to lay it.

Skip Novak: "We're pretty sure to go round [Cape Horn] in daytime and fairly close in. We think we've got maybe 600 miles to go, so we're almost sure to go around some time tomorrow during the day. Looking at the last grid file, it looks as though there will be less wind at the Horn tomorrow, 40 knots, which is fine. At the moment, we have 37-38 [knots] blowing, and we're sailing with a reef in the Solent and its quite in control. But the low is a bit further west than we thought, so it looks like we may beat the strong winds to the Horn and get up around the corner before it hits." Winds of 40 knots and turbulent confused seas with big swells coming in from the west - it will still not be pleasant. Elena told us that they already had three reefs in the mainsail.

Novak is talking about a low pressure system (955hPa) to the south-east of the Horn that will bring unpleasant conditions with winds of 50 or even 60 knots. Gusts exceeding that speed will be combined with a big swell. Any crossing of Cape Horn can be treacherous, Fingers crossed to beat this system!

Map images courtesy of Virtual Spectator, click here to go to The Race site for a free download of the software.

Club Med in blue Innovation Explorer is in green Warta Polpharma is yellow

Team Adventure is in orange Team Legato is in brick-red PlayStation is in orange-red

Team Adventure is 600 miles away from Wellington where they will stop to repair more beam damage and suffer a 60 hour penalty. (48 hours for the first stop plus 12 additional at each subsequent stop) .

They are currently struggling in light winds pushing northeast up toward Cape Farewell, which guards the entrance to the Cook Strait. Lewis: "The exterior skin of the crossbeam has peeled away significantly over a two-meter (6 feet) square area where it is constantly blasted by waves. While the beam is sound, we have no alternative but to restore the exterior skin integrity. We will also carefully survey the boat for any other potential problems at the same time."

This delay will enable Warta Polpharma and Team Legato to catch up, rendering the second half of the fleet an exciting place to be. The next big problem though is if they can finish in time to not be disqualified.

The Race rules state any competitors not finishing within 125 percent of The Race winner's time will be disqualified. If Club Med were to finish after 65 days, this would give the threesome a target of 81 days to reach Marseille, this would be a tall order for Team Legato. If Club Med finishes extremely fast, and if any of the boats don't make it back in the time difference, they will be disqualified.

Warta has put moree distance between herself and Team legato today.

Bullimore: "We've done a few repairs to the boat - we've got the batten on the main sorted out, we've fixed the wind instruments, we're still trying to repair one of the two wind generators."

Regarding Jason Owen, navigator, who was badly bruised in the ribs last night when Team Legato buried her bows in a big wave (he was thrown onto the chart table - See day 43). "He [Jason] hasn't got any broken ribs, or any fractures. It's just bruises and some pain-killing tablets, no breaks, and apart from that everyone is all right, no problems."

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