The Race...Team Adventure speeds past Buenos Aires

by Keith Taylor on 7 Mar 2001 Cam Lewis, skipper Team Adventure
celebrated his birthday today as the 110-foot American catamaran sped north
for the second straight day in moderating conditions and warmer weather.

Lewis reported that his cat was positioned 1,000 miles due east of Buenos
Aires and 2,780 miles due west of Cape Town, with 2,200 miles to sail before
it reached the Equator and 5,300 miles remaining to the finish in
Marseilles.

His satellite email message coincided with the news that Innovation
Explorer, the second-placed boat in the Race of the Millennium and a sister
ship of Team Adventure's, had just crossed the finish line.

'Our boat speed is 20 knots but our wind instruments are dead and my best
guess at our speed is 16 knots of wind from the northwest as we head
northeast on the port tack, carrying full mainsail and the Solent jib,'
Lewis said.

'We came out of the fog into the sunshine this afternoon and maintained
great speed all day on a good beam reach, making some good miles. Our daily
run for 24 hours is back up to 450 miles. Everything on the boat, on deck
and below was getting very moist with a few days of foggy weather, and then
we punched through the weather system into clear blue sky and have been
enjoying the warmth of solar power. There has been only one sail change,
down to staysail for two hours, and then back to the Solent, otherwise it
has been straight line speeding.'

Referring to his birthday, Lewis said: 'Today marks the beginning of my 44th
lap around the sun. I am still working on my second lap around the planet.

'Our biggest problem is sorting out the wind instruments. After a few hours
of work by our co-navigators Jean Yves Bernot and Larry Rosenfeld, they have
narrowed down the problem to either the masthead unit that has the
anemometer wind cups and direction sensor, or the cable inside the mast that
brings the information down to the computers.

'We will have to wait for some very calm conditions for someone to go to the
top of the mast and replace the masthead unit. This may not happen for a few
days. Going up the outside of this huge mast of ours is no picnic. The mast
is huge - 150-feet meters tall and in section five feet fore and aft. We can
go aloft inside or outside the mast. To haul someone up, we need good
climbing gear, helmet, radio, suction cups to hold on to the mast and more.

'We sail the boat by numbers - boat speed, wind speed true and apparent,
wind angles true and apparent, and magnetic or true compass course. These
are the key readouts we usually sail by. With only boat speed and compass
direction available, we now have to use our basic skills to keep sailing at
optimum performance. This should not slow us down much as we have a few
miles under our belts and can pretty easily trim and select the sails by eye
and feel.'

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.