Day 67 - Happy Belated Birthday Cam! (it was yesterday)
News - Wednesday, 03/07/2001, 8:22 PM GMT

Position	03/07/2001 8:22 PM GMT
1st	Club Med (WINNER OF THE RACE Elapsed Time: 62d 6h 56m Approx. Ave Speed:18 knots)
2nd	Innovation Explorer (FINISHED 2ND AT 11:35:38 GMT YESTERDAY - 64 d 22 h 32 m 38 s Approx. Ave. Speed: 18.45 knots)
3rd	Team Adventure (4901 nm from finish. Cam Lewis's birthday! Repaired wind instruments successfully, avg speed 11.7 knots)
4th	Warta Polpharma (5621 nm from the finish. 720 nm from TA. Heading north in better conditions, avg speed 15.9 knots)
5th	Team Legato (8400 nm from the finish. 3499 from TA. Difficult conditions en route to Cape Horn, avg speed 10.8 knots)
6th	PlayStation DNF

cat-alist Estimated arrival dates and Positions
1st	Club Med	Saturday, March 3rd - 7:56:33 PM GMT
2nd	Innovation Explorer	Tuesday, March 6th - 11:35:38 AM GMT
3rd	Team Adventure	around March 21st
4th	Warta Polpharma	around March 23rd
5th	Team Legato	around March 30th

The finish line is in the Western Mediterranean, by Marseille.
The finish line is the length of The Catalans. Innovation Explorer Med is docked at the quai des Belges, where an 80 meter finger has been especially constructed for the occasion.

Click here to read more on the finish in Marseille

Club Med, 'the Untouchables' - after the finish...
Club Med has invited the team for a week skiing at a Club Med resort. Grant Dalton has gone off to have a look at his boat for the Volvo Ocean Race (late September - 9 month race), currently being built in La Ciotat.

Innovation Explorer, 'the Hunters' - FINISHED!
This evening, the crew will gather for a drink together before returning to their various other projects. Loïck Peyron will be going to inspect his new 60-footer, due to be launched in two weeks time, Loïc Le Mignon will be busy working on the new trimaran Banque Populaire on which he is a crew member, Thierry Douillard has the launch and preparation of his Figaro boat to concentrate on, and Jérôme Teigné can get back to his cameras. The whole crew will now go their separate ways.

Innovation Explorer projected list of boat damage:

• the daggerboard: news, they hit some wood;
• The sails: ripped gennaker, patchwork reacher.
• Lost: another half of a security port that was situated under the central crossbeam.
• broken: one of the plexiglass shields that protects the companionway into one of the hulls.

Club Med boat damage (the list is getting longer):

Franck Proffit, co-skipper: "Just three days from Marseilles, because of a lower shroud failure, we nearly lost the rig. Just near the terminal where the Kevlar shroud joins the mast a lot of extra wear had taken place, we added extra lashing and connections to keep it together to the finish."

Dalton: "We were fine until about 5000 miles from the finish, which is 75% of the distance around the world, when we suffered some nasty structural core shear, or delamination under one of our beams, exactly where the front beam joins the starboard hull."

"The core between skins disintegrated over a patch of about 2 square metres in area in a really important structural part of the boat. The Three Man Army took the watertight bulkhead doors from inside and bolted them on to the inside and the outside of the suspect area. We had to steal parts from other areas in the boat, for example the bolts we used we 'borrowed' from the base of each winch, we took two from each winch, and we took a few from the generator."

• damage to the rope-rigging attachments.
• Extensive damage to the front crossbeam where it joins the hull. This occurred off of Cape Horn. Some delamination occured. They spend a day and a half attaching the two layers of carbon by doing makeshift bolting.
• Delamination around one of the crossbeam roots, where it supports the mast.
• The hulls' core material had collapsed, leading to serious localised weakening - They bolted bulkhead doors to the inside of the hulls. Three patches were added to the port hull and two to the starboard.
• Damage to the trampolines between the hulls.
• problem with the lower shroud - a metal gin-block snapped, a piece made of aluminium which was made in the USA. It may have been a problem with the metal, or a production fault, they are not sure yet.
• Padeyes anchoring huge loads from the sail plan broke under much less load than they should have.

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 projected finish:

• Wed. March 7th: ETA around March 18th
• Thur. March 1st: ETA around March 21st

Team Adventure, Entertainment Extreme - Happy belated birthday Cam! (It was yesterday)
Lewis: "Our boat speed is 20 knots, but our wind instruments are dead and my best guess at our speed is 16 knots of wind from the northwest, as we head northeast on the port tack, carrying full mainsail and the Solent jib."

"We will have to wait for very calm conditions before someone goes to the top of the mast and replaces the masthead unit. This may not happen for a few days."

"Going up the outside of this huge mast of ours is no picnic. The mast is huge, 150ft (45.7m) tall, and in sections, 5ft (1.5m) fore and aft."

"We can go aloft inside or outside the mast. To haul someone up, we need good climbing gear - helmet, radio, suction cups - to hold on to the mast and more."

Team Adventure is now in lighter conditions, in a light north-northeast breeze that is forcing them to push west.

Those Fabulous Poles - Now we should call them 'The Daring Poles'
They were in a huge depression around Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. They are 220 miles from shore, and continuing in that direction. Their current trajectory could bring them to less than 50 miles from Brasil. But as they approach shore, the greater speed they gain. They should tack close to Rio in 30 or so hours. This tactic is to avoid a high pressure system.

They are gaining ground steadily on Team Adventure. One must remember though, that the two boats performance is not equal, so any short term gains can be lost easily. We salute their tenacity!

They are still having problems with the mainsail car and have made makeshift repairs.

Drapella: "The weather forecast is excellent. We are off Copacabana beach and we are expecting to stay closer to the coast than Team Adventure has. It would be a mistake to follow the same course as them and we think we have made the best choice under the circumstances. By staying close to the mainland we will pick up favourable winds that we would not have further out to sea. This is an easy dilemma to resolve compared to the very tough conditions that we have encountered. The Race has taken on a new meaning for us since the last storm. We are satisfied that we are still in the race. This is a very special experience for every member of the crew."

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 Legato - 'the Survivor's' - Suffering in a Pacific storm
Bullimore: "It's cold - bitterly cold, and we are being tossed around like mad because the boat is continually smashing into big waves. There is water just everywhere - including our bunks - and with the continuous banging and bouncing, it is almost impossible to sleep. We had no alternative but to slow down, but we still expect to get to Cape Horn at the weekend."

The good news - for the past three days they have done over 400 miles per day, this buffer will help with this storm causing them to slow down. Remember, they must cover more than 330 miles per day to make it to Marseille before the 30 day limit.

The bad news: They are beating into a 15 knot headwind. And they must head further south, to make it around Cape Horn... further into the storm.

So where is Watcher, the safety boat? - see the dotted line in the image below - 300 miles south of Team Legato, thankfully. With only six crew suffering in harsh conditions, this is comforting.

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

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