Day 71 - Team Adventure Gaining Speed in South East Trades. Warta Polpharma pushing east. Team Legato passed Cape Horn.
News - Monday, 03/12/2001, 4:21 AM GMT

Position	03/12/2001 4:21 AM 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 (3429 nm from finish. Touched +25 knots en route to the earth's midline, avg speed 32.1 knots)
4th	Warta Polpharma (4830 nm from the finish. 1401 nm from TA. Slowed by difficult winds and rough seas, lost almost 500 miles to TA, avg speed 11.1 knots)
5th	Team Legato (6795 nm from the finish. 3366 from TA. Rounded the Horn - and heading for home, avg speed 18.0 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:

• Sun. March 11th: ETA around March 22nd
• Wed. March 7th: ETA around March 18th
• Thur. March 1st: ETA around March 21st

Team Adventure, Entertainment Extreme - in the south east trades
They are now in the winds that precede the Doldrums, making excellent headway in the trade winds, 490 miles away from the equator.

Lewis: "Splash! In between squalls the wind evaporated and Jean Yves Bernot [navigator] decided, with the boat speed down to two knots, to tie a couple of loops in a length of rope and jump off the stern for a refreshing dip. I was soon to follow. The sea water was very warm and felt terrific. Others joined in too, this teased the wind enough to return and soon we were back up to 10 knots and making some miles north."

Warta Polpharma projected finish:

• Sun. March 11th: ETA around March 25th
• Fri. March 9th: ETA around March 23rd

Those Fabulous Poles - losing ground to Team Adventure on easterly route.
Warta Polpharma is heading east, in a head wind. They are sailing in a very rough choppy seas that have caused them to reduce speed and sail area. 24 hours should see the Polish boat reach the easterly winds and turn north again, getting back en route for Marseilles and the finish line.

Drapella: "these big boats don't like sailing in choppy seas. We have a very confused sea. I just wonder what would have happened if we had followed my suggestion to go with a low pressure system close to the coast of Brazil. But we were told that this might be a trap. That’s why we took the suggestion to go the way we are going now [east]. And now finally we have the squalls behind us. Now, hopefully we can unfurl some sails, and speed up as soon as the swells come from one direction."

"The sea is rough but at least more regular. We are currently heading east but I guess tomorrow we will tack and proceed in a more northerly direction."

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' - past Cape Horn
Team Legato, at dawn passed Cape Horn 12 miles abeam of their port hull in 40 knots of breeze. They have been caught up by the depression they were hoping to avoid and may need to seek refuge as Warta Polpharma did.

Hervé Laurent and his crew on the safety boat Watcher is on station. Her mission in the Southern Ocean is over, she is just 85 miles astern of the last boat in The Race and will also soon be starting her long ascent up the Atlantic.

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.

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