Day 73 - Team Adventure in the Northeast Trades. Warta Polpharma Heading North, Enough Food to Finish? Team Legato heading towards Argentina.
News - Tuesday, 03/13/2001, 10:49 PM GMT

Position	03/13/2001 10:49 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 (2850 nm from finish. In the northeast trades, avg speed 13.9 knots)
4th	Warta Polpharma (4282 nm from the finish. 1432 nm from TA, enough food to finish? Gained back 200 miles, avg speed 16.3 knots)
5th	Team Legato (6319 nm from the finish. 3469 from TA. Racing the clock to finish, avg speed 11.4 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:

• 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 northeast trades
Team Adventure has not been slowed down by the doldrums. They headed straight into the northeast trade winds. They will have 15 to 20 knots on the nose at least until the Canary Islands. From there, the next steps will depend on the high pressure over the Azores.

Lewis: "We are in the northeast trades, beating to windward in a sea that is not too rough. We crossed the doldrums without really stopping. Everything is going well aboard, the crew is in good shape, the sea is beautiful and the weather is fine."

Warta Polpharma projected finish:

• Tue. March 13th: ETA around March 26th
• Sun. March 11th: ETA around March 25th
• Fri. March 9th: ETA around March 23rd

Those Fabulous Poles - in the southeast trades. Enough food to finish?
There is some speculation as to whether Warta Polpharma has enough food to finish, they are estimated to have only 10 days worth left, and a projected 13 days left of sailing to the finish.
Romas Paszke: "We will manage somehow".

They are proceeding with their more northerly and direct route, in 15-knot northeasterly winds.

Jaroslaw Kaczorowski: "The sea is not too heavy at the moment, and we are sailing under top mainsail and solent. We are traveling at 12 knots."

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' - passed the Falkland Islands to the west
Team Legato is in 35/40 knot winds generated by a small low pressure system north of the Falkland Islands. By tomorrow they should get some more manageable northeasterly winds and be able to make better progress up the coast of Argentina.

Team Legato must finish in 21 days - before 20:56 GMT on Monday 2 April.

Passing Cape Horn - they passed the 'Islas Diego Ramirez' to starboard.

Paul Larsen: "Big squalls were coming through with winds just under 50 knots. Lying side on, the spray is peeling across the decks in stinging sheets. We gingerly make our way north under bare poles before taking off again downhill towards the Atlantic. The wind is now touching 50 knots and with only the staysail up we are still managing bursts up to 27 knots! We decide not to pass as closely to the Horn as we would have liked. Damn it, I really wanted to see it. The conditions certainly aren't disappointing us, as it is freezing cold, howling, grey and lumpy with poor visibility."

"Freddy Dahirel spots it first off our port beam. The unmistakable outline of Cape Horn can be made out through the gloom of low scudding cloud. Perhaps this is how she should be seen. There's a rush of excitement as everyone runs for their cameras and momentos. The night's action had left us not as well prepared for this occasion as we might have hoped but what the hell. There it is in all its bleak glory. The bane of yachtsmen for centuries, the Everest of Capes. Forget the race for a moment and enjoy the here and now. We made it!"

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

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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