News
Day 55 (Sat 27 Feb 1330 – Sun 28 Feb 1330)
Crews could breathe a little easier today as the latest low pressure system moves away, allowing them to make good 1100nm in 24 hours, almost 40nm per crew – the best result for 5 days. Crews have been able to bring up the para-anchors and focus on making ground towards Antigua once again.
Now 55 days into the race, many crews still have a considerable distance to row. Typically many crews would have finished, but as yet the average distance to finish is still over 800nm, about 30% of the race. This has seen many teams re-evaluate there food stores, including the crew of Limited Intelligence who re audited their food.
While teams are expected to take 90 days of food, when at sea a number of factors can dictate how long the food actually lasts. For instance, some hatches may leak water and subsequently damage food – this in itself can be a serious problem. However, as long as crews know how much food they have, they should be able to reduce there calorific intake each day to allow there food to last longer. That is to say, instead of having 6,500kcals per day, they may reduce this to 5,500kcals per day. This is surely a tactic that HCL Workforce 1 will adopt, having declared they only have 10 days food left with 600nm to go.
Conversely Charlie Marlow and Matthew Mackaness on Roberto Coin found extra food within there stores, and subsequently emptied out some packets into the deep blue, hoping that the reduced weight will give them extra speed. They currently lie 150nm behind the final podium position for the fleet, so it will e interesting to see if they can close the gap between themselves and both Vivaldi (Rames Dames) and Karukera. Charlie has also upped the stakes in their fancy dress competition, bring out the mask of Zorro – check their latest blog for full details.
Finally, Mission Atlantic have moved several places up the leader board over the last few days, having limited the bad weather effect to low mileage, rather than negative mileage. They now occupy 14th, their highest since the opening week, and while they look to be to far behind Vivaldi (Rames Dames) to challenge for the fours class win, they will surely want to climb up as much as possible as they venture into the last 800nm.