November 8, 2001

Photos of the Day

November 8 – Pacific Ocean

The Baja Ha-Ha Rally fleet should be arriving
in Cabo San Lucas today, wrapping up seven days of glorious sailing
interspersed with three equally glorious days of shore leave.
As we did yesterday, today we
bring you Tom Lyon’s aerial photography of the start, way back
in San Diego on October 30.

The Morgan Out-Island 41 Bronco, sailed by Nels Torbersen
of Hayward

Little Wing, a Perry 52 cat sailed by John Haste of Anchorage,
AK

Brits Ahead in Jacques Vabre

November 8 – Atlantic Ocean

The multihulls are now between the Canary
Islands and Cape Verde. The northeast trade winds are filling
in over to the east of the course off the North African coastline.
A low pressure system sitting over to the west may oblige the
leading multihulls to head upwind to get back on route ­
these two weather systems could shuffle the pack before the fleet
reaches the next obstacle ­ the Doldrums.

In the Multihull Open 60 fleet, Englishwoman
Ellen MacArthur and Frenchman Alain Gautier hold a tenuous lead
of 8 miles with their older but proven Kingfisher-Foncia
over the brand new entry from Belgium, Belgacom, sailed
by Jean-Luc Nélias and Michel Desjoyeaux. “We are
going upwind now in a southeasterly breeze, trying to get back
to the east but it’s hard going,” MacArthur explained. These
top two in the west are marginally off the pace in terms of boat
speed compared to the two multihulls furthest in the east. One
is Groupama (Cammas/S. Ravussin), which made a lightning
quick pit-stop of one hour at Santa Cruz de Tenerife (in the
Canaries) to replace the starboard rudder and is already back
in third place, up to speed in a good 15 knot northeasterly breeze.

Still dominating the 60-foot monohulls
just south of Madeira is British/Irish entry Ecover. Skippers
Mike Golding & Marcus Hutchinson have guarded their backs
well but they are looking over both shoulders. Over to their
west is Swiss skipper, Bernard Stamm (Bobst Group-Armor Lux),
back in second place, only 28 miles behind. Hutchinson explained,
“We are now more on the direct route but Bernard is a new
threat to us, as we want to cross the Doldrums right over to
the west but the wind is going to be right on the nose in the
next 24 hours.”

In fifth place is the Brit-Aussie duo of
Moloney/Turner on Casto-Darty-But, whose sails and spirits
are somewhat deflated. They found a hole in their spinnaker,
which they repaired and rehoisted. Then it blew out as they sailed
under a big squall.

The other Brit-Aussie pairing of Alex Bennett
& Paul Larsen are leading the Monohull Open 50s on One
Dream – One Mission, passing Madeira to the east, and being
chased at a distance of 64 miles by Saving (Le Youdec/Bacave).
Bennett is counting on his router to pull them through: “We’re
still working on tactics with Lee Bruce to avoid the parking
lot coming up to our south and think we’ll be able to pop our
nose through a break. The only thing to do is keep moving – nothing
eats away your lead like having to stop dead!”

For more news and all the standings, see
www.jacques-vabre.com.

PlayStation
Record Attempt False Start

November 8, 2001

Steve Fossett’s PlayStation crossed
the Royal Yacht Squadron line at 0826.26 GMT this morning on
her bid to set a new record crossing the English Channel from
Cowes on the Isle of Wight to St Malo, France. In the Solent
there was 22 knots of wind and the 125-ft Morrelli/Melvin-designed
mega-cat was sailing under one reef and a staysail.

One hour into the attempt and with the
winds gusting to 50 knots with forecast 40-50 knots all the way,
skipper Fossett decided to abort this morning’s attempt.

As of 1230 GMT PlayStation was heading
back towards Southampton. Steve Fossett: “Nothing is broken,
but it was necessary to abort the attempt. We cannot maintain
enough speed due to the rough seas.” Bay Area navigator
Stan Honey is once again sailing with Fossett.

Graphic Courtesy www.fossettchallenge.com

PlayStation was
vying for one of four new trophies to be presented by the Yacht
Club de Dinard (in Malo Bay) in cooperation with Windevent, a
French sports promotion company. The trophies are for multihull,
monohull, up to 60-ft and over 60-ft. The current English Channel
record was set by Tracy Edwards and her crew aboard Royal
& Sun Alliance in October, 1997.

The latest news now is that Fossett has
scraped plans to challenge the Channel crossing record this week,
and will instead attempt the round the Isle of Wight record.
With a strong crew already assembled Fossett has decided to have
a crack at retrieving the Isle of Wight ‘Round the Island’ record
he once held on his 60-ft trimaran Lakota. “Conditions
are now very poor for a Cowes-St Malo record but a northeast
wind is ideal to go round the island. We used to hold this record
(3h 35min set in 1994) and it was broken last summer by Rodney
Pattison sailing Dexia Eure et Loire in a time of 3 h
10 min. I’d like to get it back!”

PlayStation
will leave the Empress Dock in Southampton tomorrow (Friday)
morning around 0700 GMT and be ready to start about 0900. There
appears to be no good weather pattern for a further attempt on
the Cowes-St Malo record for the next week at least, so the plan
now is for the crew to return home after the Isle of Wight circumnavigation
and wait for a new opportunity over the coming weeks.

For more news, see www.madforsailing.com.

Great American II Ahead of Record

November 8, 2001

In a different record attempt, skipper
Rich Wilson and co-skipper Bill Biewenga left New York City on
September 19 aboard the 53′ trimaran Great American II
for Melbourne (in southeastern Australia), to beat the record
set by the clipper ship Mandarin in 1855-56. Mandarin
sailed the same 14,000-mile route in 69 days, 14 hours.

As of Wednesday, November 7 at 0825 GMT,
Great American II was 728 nautical miles ahead of the
comparable position of Mandarin. They are in the Indian
Ocean, southeast of the Cape of Good Hope, 3,516 nautical miles
from Melbourne, Victoria, and expect to arrive in Melbourne,
between November 22 and November 26, where they will be hosted
by the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria.

Great American II
Photo Courtesy www.sitesalive.com

The team is sharing audio reports, pictures
and journals and answering questions of K­12 students worldwide
as part of the Ocean Challenge Live! program. For more details,
www.sitesalive.com.

YOTREPS

November 8 – 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 http://www.bitwrangler.com/yotreps/

Weather Updates

November 8 – 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 Winds and Pressure

The University of Hawaii Dept. of Meteorology
page posts a daily
map of the NE Pacific Ocean barometric pressure and winds.

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.