January 16, 2019
"Almost" is not yet considered
Jean-Luc Van Den Heede continues to hold the lead in the Golden Globe Race. His messages are as calm as the surface of the lake in calm weather. And this despite the fact that Mrak Slats almost caught up with him.
But “almost caught up,” as #Esmeralda OK writes – a concept, of course, extensible. Formally, Mark reduced the backlog from 2000 to 50 miles, but this is not the real distance between yachtsmen, and, apparently, the difference in the distance from the yachts to the "turn" in the Bay of Biscay. Incidentally, we recently wrote about how these same distances are considered.
In reality, Mark and Jean-Luc share 400 miles, but this figure has even less in common with the size of the gap from the leader.
But what really matters is the wind. It seems that Jean-Luc, much earlier, Mark will get to strong winds, which will provide the yacht with good speed on the way to the Bay of Biscay
Another equally important problem is water, fresh. Mark doesn’t have it. Ended, moreover, a week ago. All this time he uses a manual desalination plant. In order to "squeeze" 750 ml of water out of the desalination plant, you need to work thoroughly with both hands for an hour. 3 hours – to get the daily rate of water. No heavy rain is expected in the near future.
Last post Brand – THINKING ABOUT RETIRING FROM IF I CANNOT WEATHER SAFETYFIRST. If the continuation of the race will be associated with danger, Mark is thinking about stopping. Safety first of all, here with Mark, one cannot but agree. Surely, he is waiting for new no less exciting races and records. Nevertheless, it would be very sad not to see him at least in 2nd place in the main standings after such a stubborn struggle.
We have another news from Mark. You remember that he was the first of all participants to clean the bottom of the yacht from fouling. A recent inspection showed that the yacht needs cleaning again. Unfortunately, his attempt to clean the bottom again was frustrated by the sudden appearance of a 3.5-meter shark, but he would use the next lull to clean up the body.
Uku, it seems, also decided to do the cleaning. Last time, the shark prevented him from finishing his work. This time he was accompanied by dolphins.
Istvan once again coped with the problems that the autopilot was throwing at him tirelessly, he was heading north with good speed.
Tapio runs away from the next storm. A strong wind broke up his boat to quite a decent speed, despite fouling.
651 January 16, 2019 # 8726
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