16 February 2012
Visual confirmation of icebergs at 56S for the GOR leaders
Late on Wednesday night GMT, as Phesheya-Racing crossed the bluQube Scoring Gate in the mid-Pacific, down in the ocean’s south-eastern section at 56S and 1,300 miles due west of Cape Horn, the first visual confirmation of icebergs was logged by Conrad Colman and Adrian Kuttel on the leading Global Ocean Race (GOR) Class40, Cessna Citation.
While Cessna Citation continued close combat with Marco Nannini and Hugo Ramon on Financial Crisis, a brief email from Conrad Colman sent to the GOR Race Organisation and the Kiwi-South African team’s two adversaries still racing in Leg 3 warned of ‘two largish icebergs’ at 55Ëš47S and 106Ëš12W just before nightfall in the Southern Ocean. The visual confirmation of ice is a stark reminder to reindex vigilant as the fleet pass beyond a known area of ice identified by the GOR Race Committee before the start of Leg 3 in Wellington 18 days ago and indicates the continued eastwards drift of the Southern Ocean bergs below the Leg 3 scoring gate.
Meanwhile, Nick Leggatt and Phillippa Hutton-Squire were fully-focussed in crossing the bluQube Scoring Gate in violent rain squalls, gusts of over 46 knots and seas in excess of five metres: conditions that prevented the duo flying their bright red, bluQube branded A6 spinnaker to celebrate the moment: “The squalls heralded the arrival of a cold front and the wind quickly backed towards the west, necessitating a gybe,” reported Hutton-Squire as Phesheya-Racing switched onto starboard and dropped south. “With the arrival of the front the temperature has begun to drop quite noticeably and as the sun sets the temperature is now below 12 degrees,” she adds. “At the same time, the seawater temperature is beginning to fall as well and as tough as it has been to get here, we would like to thank bluQube for the part that they have played in our campaign to race around the world!”
|
