January 22, 2001

By Grzegorz | January 22, 2001

Photos of the Day

January 22 – St. Barts

Is this the prettiest little anchorage in the world? St. Jean,
St. Barts, F.W.I. would certainly have to be a candidate for
the title. As you can see, the 82º water is incredibly blue.
In addition, it’s just a short swim to a couple of the finest
restaurants in the Caribbean – not the least of which is the
lovely Eden Rock, from which this photo was taken. And there’s
something about the warm water, good food, and powder white beaches
that are irresistible to lovely ladies – such as American femmes
Tori, Susan and Suzie. Susan was in charge of the runners aboard
‘Zingaro’, the new 112-ft S&S for the New Year’s Eve Race.

Photos Latitude/Richard

The Race Update

January 22 – Southern and Indian Oceans

If you don’t have cojones the size of mooring balls, you don’t
belong on The Race. ‘Innovation Explorer’ was rocketing down
a wave at a peak of 40.5 knots (!!!!!) when crewmember Roger
Nilson raised a hatch to alert helmsman Jean-Baptise Saliou that
they were headed for an enormous block of ice. Jean-Baptise couldn’t
see it with his eyes because visibility was down to 250 meters.
The crew managed to sheet the sails in flat so the helmsman could
turn the wheel to port, resulting in the iceberg “scraping
past the bows.”

In other news, ‘Team Adventure’ is in Cape Town, South Africa,
where repairs are underway at two boatyards and are expected
to be completed in two days. The two injured crewmen are being
examined, but it looks as if they won’t be able to continue.
Crew replacements are not permitted. In a best case scenario,
‘Team Adventure’ will restart about 2,000 miles behind leader
Grant Dalton on ‘Club Med’, which, along with ‘Innovation Explorer’,
has been ripping along at an average of over 500 miles per day!

‘Club Med’, well along in the Indian Ocean already, holds
a 687 mile lead over ‘Innovation Explorer’ and is sailing a fine
line between the icebergs and cold to the south, and the longer
distance and the lighter air to the north. Dalton also explained
that while ‘Innovation Explorer’ is theoretically only 687 miles
behind, in reality they are 900 miles behind because they can’t
sail that far south due to the terrible weather and icebergs.
Indeed, the ‘Innovation Explorer’ crew apparently took a “dim
view” of almost hitting an iceberg at 40.5 knots.

Innovation Explorer
Photo Gilles Martin-Raget

Is Grant Dalton a vegetarian or what? It’s unclear, but he seems
to have banned meat from the boat, ‘not wanting the inside of
one of the hulls to look like a butcher shop’. This didn’t sit
well with many of the French crew, who two days ago pulled out
a Catalonian ham they’d hidden inside the giant wing mast! Dalton
was reportedly not happy at all.

Rankings of 22 Jan 2001 15:00:00 GMT

1. Club Med / dtf 16,564.7 miles
2. Innovation Explorer / dtl 706.0 miles
3. Team Adventure / dtl 13,76.3 miles
4. Warta Polpharma / dtl 2,576.1 miles
5. Team Legato / dtl 3,443.7 miles

For more, see www.therace.org.

Extreme Feats Failure

January 22 – Around the World

Do you think circumnavigating the world in a small outboard-powered
boat would drive you crazy? Here’s some supporting evidence:

“It’s with grief and affliction when I today – January
14, 2001 – tell you that I, Ove Herlogson, jump off the Adventure
Around the World project. I have staked everything in this. I
gave three years of my life, all my money, all my time, and lost
my girlfriend because I really wanted to be part of this project.
But I nearly lost those nearest to me and some close friends because
my partner Roy Karlsen showed his real face during the project.
There are limits in how much you can take from someone that manipulates
his whole surroundings and controls everything with threats and
violence. I’m on safe ground now, and I will not challenge his
threats. If I had known what I know today about this man, I would
have never started this project. We had overcome the Atlantic
in storm, we have experienced hurricanes on the east coast of
America, coldness and icebergs in the darkness, fog, reefs and
sandbars, overcome the malaria in Honduras, threats in Nicaragua,
bureaucracy in Mexico and Panama, threatened with machine guns
in Cuba, the tides and dangerous inlets on the west coast of America,
thefts and so forth. But it hasn’t scared me because I’ve been
on the project. But what has scared me is what a human can do.
I have been subject to mental and bodily threats, such as, ‘I
will give you a bloody beating so you can’t walk after it.’ I
have been kicked in the face. Worst of all, he said, ‘It’s only
you and me that knows what happens out here in this boat.'”

Obviously there’s another side to this story, but the moral
is choose your shipmates – and your adventures – with care. But
what’s this business about “the tides and dangerous inlets
of the west coast of America”?

The Brits Are Coming! The Brits Are
Coming!

January 22 – UK

For the first time since 1987, the Brits, who once ruled the
waves, will be competing in the America’s Cup. The money is coming
from Peter Harrison, who sold his Chernikeeff Internet systems
for more than $300 million U.S. Ian Walker, who has won two silvers
in the Olympics, will lead the sailing team, while Kiwi David
Barnes will be running the operations side. For starters, the
team has purchased the two Nippon Challenge boats. To his credit,
Harrison has already ponied up $45 million for a foundation supporting
sailing for the disabled and disadvantaged.

YOTREPS

January 22 – The Pacific Ocean and Cyberspace

Who is out making passages in the Pacific and what kind of
weather are they having? Check out YOTREPS – ‘yacht reports’ –
at www.bitwrangler.com/yotreps/

Key West Race Week

January 22 – Key West, Florida

Key West Race Week – you had to be there! And seemingly
half the Bay Area racing community was in Key West, Florida,
for the 14th annual ‘Yachting’ Key West Race Week, the biggest
and possibly best one ever.

The five-day, eight-race series attracted a record 326 boats,
representing 20 countries and 33 states. Fourteen of the entries
were from the Bay Area, including Philippe Kahn’s Farr 40 ‘Pegasus’,
which ended up second in the brutally-competitive 37-boat Farr
40 class. The winner of the class, George Andreadis’s ‘Atalanti
XI’, was named Boat of the Week. “It was the toughest regatta
I’ve ever sailed,” said ‘Atalanti’ tactician Robbie Haines.
. .

Look for a full report in our February
print issue or, if you can’t wait that long, check out the
full results, daily reports and picture gallery at www.Premiere-Racing.com.

Day 5 Action at Key West

Pax runs the line in the pre-start action
on Division 1 racecourse.

James Sinclair’s Tripp 41 Cwene II moves
down the track with the Schock 40 Cita in hot pursuit.

All Photos Walter Cooper

Impetuous, the Mumm 36 heads for
the upwind mark in the final race.

Weather Updates

January 22 – Pacific Ocean

San Francisco Bay Weather

To see what the winds are like on the Bay and just outside
the Gate right now, check out http://sfports.wr.usgs.gov/wind/.

California Coast Weather

Looking for current as well as recent wind and sea readings
from 17 buoys and stations between Pt. Arena and the Mexican border?
Here’s the place – which has further links to weather buoys and
stations all over the U.S.: www.ndbc.noaa.gov/stuff/southwest/swstmap.shtml.

Pacific Ocean Weather

You can view the University of Hawaii Department of Meteorology
satellite picture by clicking
here.

Pacific Sea State

Check out the Pacific Ocean sea states at: http://www.mpc.ncep.noaa.gov/RSSA/PacRegSSA.html.

For another view, see http://www.oceanweather.com/data/global.html.

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