2005-09-23
Ocean 1, Technology 0
Today's best performers
Technology is a wonderful thing. It enable us to do things that would have been unimaginable a mere 20 years ago. We can send emails to the boats from a table by the harbour wall on our wireless enabled laptops, follow their progress via satellite, and if they fancy they can pick up the telephone and call us on our mobiles almost anywhere in the world. A far cry from the occasional crackly radio transmission home that most mariners had to make do with for so many years.
The problem is that we get to rely on it and when the system falls over our expectations are left sorely unsatisfied. However it is important to remember that the equipment may have changed, but the ocean hasn’t and the sea is an intrinsically unfriendly place for electronic circuitry. Add to that the wonders of the world wide web and you have a potential recipe for severe frustration.
As you will be well aware, we have been experiencing several technical problems with updating the website. We hope that these have now been resolved, and will continue to work towards improving this service. We have also had problems getting position updates from some of the boats. This has been caused by a combination of equipment problems coming to light that have been exacerbated by the first few days of rough weather, and in Glasgow’s case a good old fashioned engineering problem with their generator meaning they have been running on reduced power for the last few days which has reduce their ability to communicate with the rest of the fleet. Although annoying these things do happen and it is worth remembering that this is a yacht race after all.
On that note, the question that everyone wants to ask is when will the boats arrive in Cascais. This is of course an impossible question to answer with any certainty, however we can start making a few assumptions. Firstly, the weather systems that they have been experiencing – high pressure to the east and to the west of them – have slowed them considerably over the past few days, however they have been making consistent if not rapid progress, covering around 120 – 140 miles per day. They currently have more wind, but it is not from the ideal direction, a force 4-5 from the south-south west. Exactly where they are trying to go. At current progress we should expect to see the leading pack approaching the finish line in the early hours Sunday morning. For some unknown reason it is traditional for ocean yacht races to finish at night, purely to inconvenience the Race Team and Media I am sure. This will mean that the rest of the fleet will probably be spread out over Sunday. There is a chance that the weather may swing more to the north as is forecast, but although this will speed them up, it is unlikely that this will have a huge impact on arrival day at this stage.
The racing continues to be intense, with Singapore getting today’s prize for best performance as they climb 3 places to 6th place. Westernaustralia, Durban and Liverpool continue to joust with WA coming out on top this morning, whilst New York and Glasgow fall a place each. Whatever happens between now and the finish you can guarantee that each team will be fighting for every point they can get.
The Race Team
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