Day 47, Wednesday March 24, 1999

Neal Petersen © Photo Billy Black

Neal Petersen finished his first solocircumnavigation in Punta. He emailed earlier: "After a long night sailing through lightning storms, concerned that I could take a lightning strike, dawn found me this morning with a major weather front passing through. There was not much wind in the front, but it did bring variable wind directions. Finally at mid morning, the wind switched to the southeast and I was able to make a direct course towards Punta. After dodging shipping over more than 27,000 miles, enduring frustrating calms, repairing broken equipment and torn sails, encountering life-threatening storms, having crossed the four major oceans, rounded the infamous Cape Horn and crossing the equator twice, this 4-year solo-circumnavigation concluded today at 21:14. Since leaving Punta in April 1994, my actual time at sea going from Punta to Charleston, Charleston to Cape Town, Cape Town to Auckland then returning to sea was 195 days."

Neal Petersen © Photo Marek Slodownik

As Petersen approached Punta del Este the rain was coming down steadily with no wind to fill his sails. Then, finally, at 6:11:40 p.m. local time No Barriers crossed the finish line as the sun broke through the sky. Once on the dock, Petersen was very happy with his first fifth place finish in the race. He finished the leg after 46 days, 22 hours, 11 minutes and 40 seconds at sea.

No Barriers © Photo Marek Slodownik 

Minoru Saito, who dropped behind Petersen not long ago, was still 311 miles away from Punta. The last competitor, Neil Hunter, finally crossed over onto the continental shelf with 692 miles to go. One could read his excitement in his email: "The water is quite shallow here, less than 100 meters, as I sail just inside the continental shelf drop off. And the color of the water is very greenish and very different to the ice block, clear blue of the Southern Ocean. I have flipped charts and the one on the table has Punta del Este clearly marked. Quite exciting."

© Photo Richard Konkolski

Positions:

Class 1

Class 2

Copyright © Richard Konkolski
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