The Race...Team Adventure southwest of Australia
by Keith Taylor on 5 Feb 2001
Team Adventure, the 110-foot catamaran competing in The Race of The Millennium has sailed over 1,500 miles in the last three days, powered by the driving winds of a Southern Ocean storm.
Team Adventure, the third-placed boat in The Race, hooked into the
northwesterly quadrant of a very aggressive Southern Ocean storm system that
developed right on cue in the boat's path last Thursday night.
Unable to get north of the low and enjoy the full benefits of the following
westerly breezes to be found there, Team Adventure has been blast reaching
in southerly winds for three days now, with two and three reefs in the main,
wind howling at 30 to 40 knots, the boat logging 500 to 550 mile days, with
water cascading clear across it, to be torn off to leeward in long smoky
trails.
'Roaring, raging, romping, stomping, deep south express. Live from the
bottom of the earth or close to it,' wrote skipper Cam Lewis in a satellite
email from the boat today.
'The boat speed is 28 knots. We are heading east. The wind is south, seas
rough and tough, wake smoking, bow waves exploding, boat covered in seasmoke as we cruise east with some pace.'
According to Commanders' Weather, the team's shoreside routing and weather
forecast office based in Nashua, NH, Team Adventure should be able to cling
to the low as it weakens south of Australia's Cape Leeuwin and then ride its
westerly, following breezes as it explodes and regenerates south of Tasmania
later this week.
'I never thought the Indian Ocean would be this big,' wrote Larry Rosenfeld,
Lewis's founding partner in Team Adventure and the co-navigator of the boat.
'I traced it a hundred times on the globe at home, but to really understand
it, that's another matter entirely.
'We've been going for more than a week at this wild pace and we're still
only half way across. Not even to Cape Leeuwin near Perth, Western
Australia, the home of our shipmate, Philippe Peche. There are still 3,600
miles to go to New Zealand's Cook Strait. That's further away than the width
of the Atlantic Ocean.
'This pace is unbelievable - 500-550 miles a day, as fast as any boat in the
history of sail or power. One nautical mile every 144 seconds or
approximately 72 waves, which ever comes first.'
Team Adventure is a partner in a pair of innovative web sites.
www.nationalgeographic.com/teamrace, the web site of the National Geographic
Society, is the educational partner in the collaborative venture. The
National Public Radio affiliates WBUR in Boston, MA, at www.WBUR.org, and
WRNI in Providence, RI, at www.wrni.org, are the exclusive radio media
partners.
Monster.com, the leading global online careers site and the flagship brand
of TMP Worldwide (NASDAQ: 'TMPW'; ASX: 'TMP'), has signed a Sponsor Level
Partnership - becoming the first major sponsor of the team.
For more information on Team Adventure, go to http://www.TeamAdventure.org
or visit the race site at http://www.therace.org. Additionally, individuals
wishing to donate to the Team Adventure Education Foundation or corporations
looking for sponsorship opportunities should contact Lydia Langston at
Lydia@TeamAdventure.org.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Keith Taylor Lydia Langston
Taylor Associates Team Adventure
Tel: +1 (781) 837-8833 Tel: +1 (401) 862-7600
KeithTaylor@TeamAdventure.org Lydia@TeamAdventure.org
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