Day 44, Sunday January 17, 1999

Petersen's No Barriers

At dawn, Neal Petersen surveyed the situation after the last night's collision. He found some damage below the water line. "At the water line on the bow is a bit missing. Whatever I hit was a large solid object. I am taking some water, but conditions are very calm and the flow is minimal, " he wrote. "I will have to come out of the water in Auckland. This is a nuisance, as I was not planning to lift out. It is a possibility that it was a semi-submerged container crate, but I have no way to confirm this. I am the third vessel in our fleet to have hit something in the Tasman Sea. For a sea with very little shipping, this is bad."

No Barriers © Photo Marek Slodownik

Despite his trouble, he was able to pass Saito and take a 4 miles led on him. Both have slightly over 800 miles to go. Hopefully they will have a better weather than Neil Hunter, who wrote: "I am totally becalmed so have dropped all sail to stop them flogging to death and am going nowhere. Main halyard is now tangled around mast anyway so we will wait till morning. The Tasman stinks."

At the end of the remaining fleet Robin Davie had another trouble. He reported: "The last 24 hours have seen another challenging day, and I can only conclude you need to be a combination of Coco the Clown and Merlin the Magician to get on down south here. Our speed, or miles speak for themselves, only 170. The winds haven't exactly cooperated, with yesterday's gale falling light this morning and backing westerly, not the best sailing gybe angle. Rain and poor visibility have continued all day. Of much more significance though was the engine - or rather the failure of the engine to start up and get going during the night to charge the batteries, and that really is the pits. The humor of the clown is required - I felt most disheartened, and it's a problem I really don't need. However, like the clown, if you don't laugh, you'll cry, so I guess we'd better laugh and live with it. It would help to be able to conjure up a few good fixes now and again… At the end of our 4th week we should be close to New Zealand, but we aren't… Our miles for the last week have been a dismal 1157 miles sailed and a computer distance that has decreased by 1134 miles, leaving us 2503 miles to go, so we are just going to have to pedal a bit faster… As night falls, the rain is clearing away, the western horizon has a bright red low cloud hue but no sun visible, and the light winds are falling lighter - the last thing I need is a calm to set in as we are already being bounced and tossed around to the residual seas and swells coming from all directions."

© Photo Richard Konkolski

Positions:

Class 1

Class 2

Copyright © Richard Konkolski
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