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Around Alone

Emma Richards undertook mission impossible to keep second place

mardi 5 novembre 2002 – Information Velux 5 Oceans

The top 4 Class 1 boats racing to Cape Town in Leg 2 of Around Alone are still rocketing south, led by the Swiss skipper Bernard Stamm on board Bobst Group-Armor Lux. Looking at the last day’s position reports, issued every 8 hours to the fleet and to the general public, it doesn’t look like much has happened, but appearances are definitely deceptive if you were to ask second placed British skipper Emma Richards on Pindar.


"Yesterday was a shocker, the gooseneck fitting came off the deck and threatened to end my race and allow me only to limp into Cape Town. I spent most of the day with single reef in the main and no boom while I undertook mission impossible ; trying to rebend a 12mm aluminum plate to refit it and get back racing again. I managed to get the job done by sundown and somehow only lost 20 miles to the Frenchman !"

The Frenchman that she was referring to is Thierry Dubois on Solidaires who, despite Emma’s problems has not managed to narrow the gap. At last poll he was 37 miles behind Pindar while both boats have managed to close a little on class leader Bobst Group/Armor Lux.

Class 1 have some more interesting times ahead as the South Atlantic High is in the South East and so Stamm, Richards & Dubois are taking the risk to put some more easting into their southerly heading to cut the corner to Cape Town. However, the High could move Northwest again and at worst swallow them up in light airs. This may hand Graham Dalton a trump card, and see him drive past on Hexagon with favourable winds in his more Westerly position.

There have been some changes at the back of Class 2. John Dennis has brought Bayer Ascensia up the fleet and blown by Tim Kent on Everest Horizontal and Alan Paris on BTC Velocity. Dennis may be the oldest sailor in the race, but he is not showing his age, nor is he allowing it to slow him down.

We spoke to a disgruntled Tim Kent heading west in search of lady luck : "The forecast of 20 knots of steady wind that I had been seeing on the weather maps literally disappeared to zero when I pulled a map yesterday afternoon," he said. "I thought I would be able to sneak through to the east of the fleet, but when I saw that my lucky card had disappeared, I ran on deck and gybed the boat. Clearly I had been fooled and I needed to get west as quickly as possible." In the last 24 hours Everest Horizontal has swallowed some hard medicine, but the westing is necessary in order to be in a good position for crossing the doldrums. Further to the south Tommy Hilfiger Freedom America and Ocean Planet were tasting the fringes of the doldrums. Their speeds had dropped and they were, as Bruce Schwab noted, "In the Bozo Zone." 

And finally ?as if solo skippers had time in their day to do anything but attend to their boat’s every need, not on board 2nd placed Spirit of yukoh ? Japanese skipper Kojiro Shiraishi did something even Emma probably hasn’t had time to do - paint his toes ! The image he sent back of his ’body art’ called ’Around Alone Family’ is a must-see in the photo gallery online.

Positions at 1400hrs UTC 5th November 2002

Class 1
– Boat, Time, Lat, Lon, DistRun, AvgBsp, AvgHeading, DTF (nm) DFL (nm)
– 1 Bobst Group Armor-Lux, 25 04.760 S, 18 34.400 W, 99.97 nm, 12.50 kt, 151 °T, 2017.18 nm
– 2 Pindar, 19 35.320 S, 19 11.680 W, 96.45 nm, 12.06 kt, 159 °T, 2269.03 nm, 251.9nm
– 3 Solidaires, 19 21.600 S, 19 51.720 W, 90.49 nm, 11.33 kt, 148 °T, 2303.95 nm, 286.8nm
– 4 Hexagon, 18 10.520 S, 24 47.320 W, 86.93 nm, 10.87 kt, 136 °T, 2549.06 nm, 531.9nm
– 5 Ocean Planet, 7 24.960 N, 24 37.920 W, 61.67 nm, 7.72 kt, 147 °T, 4476.01 nm, 2458.8nm
– 6 Tiscali, 43 27.320 N, 8 21.000 W, 0.00 nm, 0.00 kt, 0 °T, 6799.83 nm, 4782.7nm
 

Class 2
– Boat, Time, Lat, Lon, DistRun, AvgBsp, AvgHeading, DTF (nm) DFL nm
– 1 Tommy Hilfiger, 6 02.160 N, 25 58.440 W, 23.62 nm, 2.95 kt, 212 °T, 4369.49 nm,
– 2 Spirit of yukoh, 11 21.560 N, 20 43.920 W, 48.30 nm, 6.04 kt, 217 °T, 4795.13 nm 425.6nm
– 3 Spirit of Canada, 12 48.600 N, 23 25.360 W, 52.78 nm, 6.59 kt, 243 °T, 4802.96 nm 433.5nm
– 4 Bayer Ascensia, 12 36.550 N, 21 35.280 W, 43.74 nm, 5.47 kt, 197 °T, 4834.88 nm 465.4nm
– 5 BTC Velocity, 12 28.560 N, 20 58.620 W, 30.76 nm, 3.85 kt, 233 °T, 4844.91 nm 475.4nm
– 6 Everest Horizontal, 14 08.680 N, 23 10.640 W, 64.69 nm, 8.10 kt, 258 °T, 4883.24 nm 513.8nm
– DTF - Distance to finish DFL - Distance from leader

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