Day 70 - Team Adventure Gaining Speed in South East Trades. Warta Polpharma Mainsail Traveller Problems, a slow day. Team Legato Making Good Time in Good Conditions for Cape Horn Tomorrow.
News - Saturday, 03/10/2001, 11:54 PM GMT

Position	03/10/2001 11:54 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 03/06/2001 - 64 d 22 h 32 m 38 s Approx. Ave. Speed: 18.45 knots)
3rd	Team Adventure (4003 nm from finish. Picking up speed in south-east Trades, avg speed 14.4 knots)
4th	Warta Polpharma (4932 nm from the finish. 929 nm from TA. Struggling in headwinds, lost 200 miles to TA, avg speed 7.9 knots)
5th	Team Legato (7266 nm from the finish. 3263 from TA. 400 miles from Cape Horn in perfect west winds, avg speed 16.4 knots)
6th	PlayStation DNF

The finish line is in the Western Mediterranean, by Marseille.
The finish line is the length of The Catalans. Innovation Explorer 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

Team Adventure projected finish:

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

Team Adventure, Entertainment Extreme - in the south east trades
Team Adventure is focussed on getting the correct line of attack to cross the Equator.

Warta Polpharma projected finish:

• Fri. March 9th: ETA around March 23rd

Those Fabulous Poles - mainsail traveller problems
Warta Polpharma heading north east, has a head wind. They must move away from the bulge in the Brazilian coast which is known for flukey air. They will also have to navigate the high pressure zone, the so called concertina effect.

Roman Paske: "In the early evening the sea was so confused that we had to take in another reef and reduce down from the solent to the staysail, and yet the wind was barely blowing 20 knots. Then we had hardly shaken out the reef and re-hoisted the solent, and bang! All hands on deck, a 35/43 knot squall hit us, sails dropped nice and quickly, thanks to a well-oiled crew. It was like a white wall speeding towards us".

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 Legato projected finish:

• Fri. March 9th: ETA around March 30th

Team Legato - 'the Survivor's' - Cape Horn by lunchtime Sunday (400 miles to go)
Team Legato, in 20 knot westerly winds expected to stiffen to 45 knots, managed to position themselves well of the low pressure system. They have just passed Watcher, by 20 miles.

They were successful in exceeding their required minimum distance of 320 miles in the last 24 hours - 351 miles.

What Else Can Happen?
It has been reported the crippled Russian space station Mir is due to fall to earth about 5,000 miles east of Australia, between 10 and 15 March, not too far from Team Legato.

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

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 Watcher is the dotted yellow line PlayStation is in orange-red

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:

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.

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