The Race - 1030 - 17/1/01

We can see Club Med's 'train' clearly on the weather image (above) - the depression to the south-east of them. This is moving east at a decent rate and taking Club Med and - just - Team Adventure with it. But Innovation Explorer's plight is all too apparent from their position still stuck in the middle of the high and doing just six knots this morning.

For Loick Peyron, the problem is not having the right sail for the conditions, "The problem is, and I keep repeating it, is that we only have a choice of two foresails at the moment (a reacher and a big gennaker) and we had to wait while one of them dried following some repair work we've just done." That medium gennaker they couldn't afford to buy is clearly bugging him. But Peyron also acknowledged that, "We must not get into the habit of using our budget problem as an excuse to justify our mistakes."

And fortunately for Innovation Explorer, while the first train has left the station, there are a few more coming soon after (which is more than you could say for South West Trains yesterday).

The forecast for Saturday (right) shows a steady stream of low pressure systems rolling round Antarctica, just like they're supposed to - but didn't for the Vendee fleet.

The system that Dalton is locked onto at the moment is just disappearing out of sight in the bottom right of the image, and there is solid westerly breeze all the way from there back to Peyron's current position. So the three leaders will all be rocking and rolling in Southern Ocean conditions by the weekend. The question is how many miles Peyron will lose to the sisterships by then.

The other question that will soon be answered is just how quick these boats can go in the Southern Ocean. Flat water and twenty five knots is about their fastest condition, and it remains to be seen if they can find the weather and sea state to maintain averages in the mid-to-high 20s, and what these speeds will mean in terms of their ability to position themselves relative to the weather systems. And we'll also see how reliable these boats are in the Southern Ocean.

Aboard Team Legato they were also struggling with light air - back in the Doldrums, "It’s hot and humid here, but we are within 50 miles of crossing the Equator and expect to escape the Doldrums very soon." commented Tony Bullimore, "Conditions have been very light at times, but we have kept going throughout at around 10 knots and we seem to be containing Warta Polpharma’s lead." But their deficit to Club Med is now past 2,500 miles.

Warta Polpharma took the opportunity, while the three leaders were parked in the high, of recording a couple of best day's runs for the fleet. But that's all over now and the gap was sliding inexorably upwards overnight. But crewman Jaroslaw Kaczorowski talked to The Race office about the interest in his homeland: "We are being closely followed in Poland. We have an audience rating of 19 and 21% on the sports programme of the leading TV station in Poland ... Before, this sport was not very well known by the general public."

Standings (at 0700 GMT, 17/1/01)

1 Club Med
2 Team Adventure +163 nm
3 Innovation Explorer +471.3 nm
4 Warta Polpharma +1665.3 nm
5 Team Legato +2501.5 nm

Map images courtesy of Virtual Spectator, click here to go to The Race site for a free download of the software.