THE FINISH IS NEAR

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The finish line is in sight for the leader of the 2007 Mini Transat, Yves Le Blevec on Actual. The race website has estimated that Yves may be finishing late today. From then, it is anyone’s guess as to what might be happening. As most of you have probably seen by now, Clay and 8 of the other top boats are not reporting their current positions during the regular updates. There appears to be some sort of issue with the GPS beacons on these boats. The issue first became apparent on Sunday afternoon, the 21st. Since then, more boats are showing as “NC” meaning no contact. The positioning chart then places all of these boats at the bottom of the fleet since they are not sure where they are.

Team Acadia does not have any additional information as of yet. We do have a cameraman who arrived in Bahia late Monday night. We will post any brief updates on Clay’s position that we can gain by phone from Bahia on our website Race Data Center at www.teamacadia.org. Additional Team Acadia supporters will be arriving in Bahia on Wednesday and Thursday.

From the last position we knew, we are estimating that Clay should be arriving in Bahia on Thursday morning. (Bahia is only 1 hour ahead of EDT.) We plan on having a chase boat film Clay crossing the finish line. Stay tuned for a semi-live webcast from Bahia on Clay’s finish and an interview with him will be posted on the site as soon as it can be uploaded later that day.

Think fast thoughts for Clay and safe passage for all the sailors.

Team Acadia

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ANALYSIS OF THE FINAL STRATEGY

by Rod Johnstone

The final strategy before the last leg was based on a weather routing down the rhumb line of the course. Up until about 48 hours before the race, the routing recommendation favored sailing East through the Canary Islands on the way to the Cape Verde Island waypoint "gate", which was a required "mark" of the course. Fifteen of the sixteen boats ahead of Clay at the Cape Verde Islands took this Easterly course. Two others, Isabelle and one other, who went East of Clay were also well ahead of him until they dropped back with damage. Only one sailor, Kristian Hansjeck, made out by going way west of the rhumb line to Cape Verde. So the East was highly favored because of stronger winds toward the African Coast.

Once South of the Cape Verde Islands, the strategy was to sail West of the course to stay in more breeze through the "doldrums" just North of the Equator. Clay stuck to this strategy and made a net gain during those days of a hundred miles or so. The strategy toward the end of the race is to stay off the Brazilian Coast for more wind and more favorable current.
The latest update at 1800 hours GMT on October 21 had him in 8th place going around Fernando de Narohna Island. Two of the boats in front of him at that time appear to have had GPS beacon issues, so we are not clear of his exact place. At the worst, it is 10th.

It will be interesting to see whether he moves to the East of the course on the final reach down the Brazilian Coast in accordance with what was initially the game plan.

Clay has maintained a steady course down the rhumb line and consistently increased his place in the fleet since leaving Funchal, while many of the top competitors have been all over the race course and up-and-down in speed. This is evidence that Clay has been sailing conservatively and pacing himself. I would take this as a good sign. We are down to the final 2-3 days now. He should be pushing Acadia hard to try to maintain his place and possibly pick up a boat or two. We will know by Thursday.