Club Med out of the Doldrums in The Race
by Club Med Media 22 Feb 2001 14:47 GMT
It passed quickly. The notoriously tricky Doldrums were negotiated carefully by Club Med during the hours of darkness last night. The giant catamaran has managed once again to slip through one of the
more complex parts of The Race relatively unhindered.
By crossing the Equator Club Med picks up two new speed records, the Cape Horn to the Equator record, more than a day and seven hours quicker than Sport Elec during the last Jules Verne Trophy attempt, and a new Equator to Equator record, of 42 days eleven hours, some five days quicker than the same Sport Elec.
Club Med had a lead of 971 miles at noon today, and with only 3100 miles to sail to the finish in Marseilles, ETAs are being calculated by everybody now that the North Atlantic and a bit of Mediterranean is all that remains to be sailed. Skipper Grant Dalton refuses to talk about a possible finish date and time, preferring to concentrate on the job at hand rather than speculation. But shore-side weather router 'Clouds' Badham has been talking of a date of somewhere between the 2nd and 5th March. Joined this morning by satellite telephone Grant Dalton described the Doldrums for Club Med: "It cost us 200 miles but I think we are through. The sky isn't clear yet so I am still suspicious but the wind is steady from the North East which is what we would expect. We picked our spot well. I think the Doldrums buckled when we got there. It is like the thing dipped in the middle and the apex of the dip was about where we crossed the Equator. It was incredible, as we saw zero zero zero on the GPS the Doldrums started and the wind shut off. We are
one and a half degrees of Latitude further North now, that is to say 90 miles, and I'm pretty sure we are out the other side."
The short and intense session through the night required all crew to work hard: "Everybody worked through the night to keep the boat going. We had the Code Zero up for a while, we manouvered a lot. I would say it was one of the easiest crossings for me. Because we worked so hard there was no chance for any of the crew to enjoy the rain squall and take what would have been the first shower since the Cook Straits." Looking forward to the next section of the course and the North East Trades Dalton had this to say: "So now we have a three day upwind slog. We have to climb up through the Trades and then hopefully hook into this depression that is hanging around to the West of
Portugal. That should give us plenty of pace towards Gibraltar. But we have to nurse this boat upwind first, it's not something to underestimate."
And on the subject of second placed Innovation Explorer and their approach to the Doldrums:
"They will be upset to see that we have slipped through this easily. They are hurtling down to this point at high speed to cross here too. They didn't want to cross where they were lined up further East. The flyer they wanted to take just wasn't going to work."
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