The Rolex Transatlantic Challenge got underway a day late yesterday, in 3-5 knots of wind. Painful. Mari Cha and Maximus are neck and neck, holding out hope that this thing could turn into a very interesting match race. Here’s helmsman Mike Sanderson, from MC IV:
“The race started on time at 14:10 local time on what was unfortunatly shaping up to be a very light airs start. Sure enough by the time the gun went we had a whopping, 3.5 knots of wind, so that was a little slow going. We set up on the leward end of the line, with Maximus and Carrera to windward of us – this gave us plenty of room to take speed or height depending on where we thought the next puff was coming from.
Since the start gun was fired, we have pretty much had every angle in this wind strength, to say that it has been shifty and puffy would be an understatement.
Anyway….. for now it is wriggle wriggle, just to make sure that we squeeze every last drop of speed out of the good ship, Mari Cha IV.”
You can follow (sort of) along with the abysmal fleet tracker. See if you can make more sense of it than I can…
Light Air Start: “Damn, we should have started in that 50-knot snotbuster. Our ETA in this stuff is January 2006…”
The Earthist Chronicles 