DAY 49 - Innovation Explorer has another record, traversing the Southern Ocean route - Cape of Good Hope to Cape Horn
News - Saturday, 02/17/2001, 4:01 AM GMT

Position	02/17/2001 4:01 AM GMT
1st	Club Med (4901 nm from finish. In extreme conditions upwind in rough seas, avg speed 11.6 knots)
2nd	Innovation Explorer (768 nm from the leader. Good conditions now but not for long, avg speed 17.9 knots)
3rd	Team Adventure (6416 nm from leader. Leaving Wellington midnight Saturday GMT, avg speed 0.0 knots)
4th	Warta Polpharma (6443 nm from the leader. Almost at Wellington for satellite repairs, avg speed 8.9 knots)
5th	Team Legato (6853 nm from the leader. Lost satcom, will stop, but not likely in Wellington, avg speed 16.4 knots)
6th	PlayStation DNF

Club Med's Dalton: "The last 24 hours have been Hell. Much worse than anticipated. The low that we had passed by yesterday came right back over the top of us and gave us 40 knot headwinds on top of this ridiculous sea. We have lost a lot of distance to Innovation Explorer but we don't care. All we want is to be delivered from this place. I always knew this would be the toughest area but it has really vindicated all that I said about it. This has been the worst day of The Race so far for Club Med."

Conditions on board are extreme, with a violently pitching catamaran the crew are unable to rest and are living with the stress of feeling their boat suffering in the seaway beneath them.

Dalton: "The boat rises up vertically and then falls into the deep hole behind each steep wave. Normally in your bunk you lie feet forward to avoid banging your head against the forward bulkhead. Well now it is the other way round. You have to sleep head forwards so that when the boat climbs up a wave and becomes vertical you don't bang your head on the bulkhead behind. No one has slept for at least 36 hours. We had a little rip in the main, which is just about fixed, and a broken batten which is no big deal."

Innovation Explorer have another record, traversing the Southern Ocean route - Cape of Good Hope to Cape Horn via the chicane in New Zealand - in 21 days, seven hours and five minutes, or just one hour and 25 minutes less than Club Med.

Innovation Explorer is gaining on Club Med making 18 knots, but will soon come up against two regions of high pressure that will slow them down. Last night they experienced a 2 to 3 meters rip in the large gennaker.

Elena Caputo: "We had a major rip in the gennaker, really quite big. We spent most of the night sewing up the sail, but right now were doing very well. Obviously, it always happens in the middle of the night - no moon and pitch dark. We had to drag it down below. Basically, the whole crew spent most of the night crunched in a very tiny space, buried under the sail. I literally couldn’t move my knees. We sewed, we stitched, we glued and we pasted. The experts say it is going to be back to normal now. It was the big gennaker."

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

Team Adventure is docked at Lambton Quay in Wellington undergoing repairs to her forward beam and having a second transmitter fitted. They are due to put back to sea on February 17th, at 11.52 pm GMT.

Lewis: "They're making super progress. They're looking forward to finishing tomorrow night, letting the cure go off so we can leave on Sunday afternoon. It's just the outer skin laminate on the repair job which was done before. You use water to cut steel these days. It appears the edges weren't tapered in well enough, and a little bit of water got in there from slamming into the waves and that started peeling the laminate back. We're doing our best to resurrect the whole structure. It's about a two meter [6.5ft] square patch. It's not a big problem. It's a frustratingly small problem for a big boat. There's no need for any core replacement at all. It was just the outer skin. Tomorrow I think we're going to lift the mast up a couple of inches and clean the ball out. For some reason, we still have some problem keeping that lubricated, so we'll take the opportunity of being here to get that cleaned out."

Warta Polpharma will be stopping Saturday for 2 hours for Immarsat replacement at the request of the race committee will get restitution at the finish for the time they are stopped.

Warta-Polpharma has passed Cape Farewell, the northernmost point of South Island, New Zealand. They are now travelling to the dock in Wellington, where they should arrive shortly.

Team Legato: a giant wave washed the Satcom B transmitter off the stern of their port hull today. The satellite transmitter is used to send daily TV video feeds from the boat back to The race headquarters in Paris which are then distributed to the media worldwide.

Race organisers are racing to get a third unit flown down to the New Zealand capital to reach there on Sunday afternoon to coincide with Team Legato's arrival. If it does not arrive in time, then Team Legato has the option of sailing on to Cape Horn and picking up a new transmitter in the Falkland Islands instead.

The crew will not be penalised for the pit-stop but are not allowed to step ashore, gain outside assistance or take on stores and food.

Team Legato continues to have the best run of the fleet and did another 400 plus day yesterday. Cook Strait is now less than 800 miles away and Bullimore and his crew expect to pass through some time over the weekend. If the forecast is as favourable to them as it looks, they could be right on the heels of the Polish team going back into the Southern Ocean.

Bullimore: "I think we can manage on the food we've got. It might get a bit tight towards the end. We've got two water-makers on board, so we shouldn't run out of water."

When asked about fuel supplies (for batteries and onboard engines): "We're a bit tight, but if we hang on in there we should be OK. We've just got to be prudent and a bit careful with it. We can't use it in any old way."

There is a high pressure system in the southern ocean that could make conditions light for the cats leaving New Zealand however the low that Team Legato has been riding so successfully is arriving to push the high away and better breeze should fill in to the east of New Zealand late Saturday and Sunday. That will provide something to power Warta Polpharma's escape to the south, but not before it's allowed Tony Bullimore and co to close the gap even further.

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

PlayStation News - Still in Palm Beach, Florida, Planning for New Records
Steve Fossett hopes that the boat and crew should be ready to embark on a spring programme, from early April onwards. They will have a crack at the Miami to New York passage first, and then another attempt at the biggie - the New York to Lizard Point west-to-east transatlantic record. This is the one that Fossett will really want, Serge Madec and Jet Services' decade old record. Once over on the European side of the pond, they will also look at having a go at the record that Club Med broke on her first trip - the east-to-west transat.

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

[Print]    [Close] E-mail: Webmistress Copyright ©Xavier Innovations Ltd. All rights reserved