Day 37, Sunday January 10, 1999

Michael Garside with his wife © Photo Billy Black

There was a tough fight for second place. Balance Bar was trailing behind Magellan Alpha all the way across the Indian Ocean. Some 40 miles from Auckland she was able to get into second position but not for long. Only five miles from finish Garside again acquired second place and held it over the finish line. Garside finished just before 4 p.m. local time (0249 Greenwich Mean Time) after 35 days, 16 hours, 49 minutes and 56 seconds at sea.

Garside's Magellan Alpha © Photo Billy Black

Garside was leading his class for 11 days during the early stage of leg 2. He was relieved when Mouligne took the lead. He planned to stay close behind the leader and take advantage of some opportunity at the right time before the finish but that did not happen as planned. Once Mouligne got into first place, he strongly kept it and finished almost a week ahead.

Magellan Alpha
Garside's main problem was directional input for his autopilots. He solely relayed on magnetic compasses, which were weak in response once they got closer to the magnetic pole. The system did not react fast enough during high speeds and he was doing 10 or 15 crash jibes a day. He lost the lead and boats behind him caught up on him.

Brad Van Liew © Photo Billy Black 

Only 2 minutes and 21 seconds later, Brad Van Liew's Balance Bar finished in third place with leg time of 35 days, 16 hours, 52 minutes and 17 seconds. It was the closest finish in the 16 years long history of the BOC Challenge and Around Alone, solo around the world race. After two legs, Garside's lead over Van Liew was 1 hour, 29 minutes and 27 seconds.

Victor Yazykov © Photo Billy Black

The biggest surprise for leg two was the early arrival of Victor Yazykov. He finished at 2316 local time (1016 Greenwich Mean Time) after 36 days and 16 minutes at sea. He lost his ability to communicate via email three weeks ago. He was very surprised to learn that he came only few hours behind two of his competitors sailing much bigger boats. He jumped from 8^th overall after the first leg to 4^th overall.

Yazykov's Wind of Change Russia © Photo Billy Black

After the finish he said that the trip across the Indian Ocean was sometimes scary but in general all competitors were lucky with the weather. His boat was knocked down a few times. A masthead light was hanging by the power chord for last three or four weeks, his windex arrow was bent and his mast was in the water three or four times.

Shuten-dohji II © Photo Billy Black
Five sailors still remained at sea. The closest, Minoru Saito, was 1733 miles away. Neal Petersen 96 miles behind Saito reported a passing front with winds over 40 knots. He had to take down his mainsail. As he was taking the main down, a wave broke over the bow. Three feet of water traveled over the deck making him completely wet. Two hours earlier he was on the radio net with Saito and Neil Hunter who warned them about the coming weather. Hunter was caught by surprise, crash gybed and suffered damage to his autopilot and his mainsail. Neil Hunter continued sailing under only a storm jib and was waiting for better weather to be able to do repairs.

Robin Davie was 3381 miles from Auckland. He wrote: "What a difference 24 hours makes. This time yesterday evening, lighter winds were veering through west, we had just gybed to a northeasterly course, and with full sail set gliding along at 9 knots with a large southwesterly swell behind us. A half moon was rising through the clouds ahead, putting silvery shimmers over the sea off the starboard bow. This evening sees us bouncing around like a demented cork with crashing side seas smashing into the side of us as a 40- to 45-knot southwesterly brings hail squalls every 15 or 20 minutes. And SC gets laid over towards her beam-ends. At the end of the third week we are right on halfway to Auckland, I hope the 2nd half is a little quicker than the first half since it's exactly 21 days to the 30th January, arrive in Auckland cut-off day. It's do-able, but not a lot of time to spare, and we have 1400 miles of Tasman Sea to cover, which judging by the calms and headwinds experienced by the lead boats can be a slow and difficult experience."

Fedor Konioukhov © Photo Billy Black

Fedor Konioukhov let us know about him after a long period of silence. He reported: "Good day everybody, this is Fedor from the traverse of the West side of Australia. In the last couples days I have faced with the first serious problems since the start of the leg 2. The problem is - I can't start both: diesel generator and main engine to charge my batteries. There is no sun and my solar batteries are useless. This is really a bad situation for me, I can't use autopilot and I have to tune my boat by the sails and it is extremely difficult to steer for a long time due to the rough weather. I am afraid that my computer gets not enough power, so I presume that in the couple days you will get no signal from my boat though the Inmarsat. I will use Argos beacon more often to let you know that I am OK. Today I spent more than 2 hours in my diesel compartment to fix the problem (first to find), but without any luck. Meanwhile, my boat was knocked down. I can tell you that this is unpleasant when you are knocked downed in the Southern latitudes, but it is triple unpleasant when at this moment you are sitting in the one square meter room. Any way I will try to fix one of the engines, I have 3.000 miles to go."

© Photo Richard Konkolski

Positions:

Class 1

Class 2

Copyright © Richard Konkolski
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