London lead but for how long?
10:30, 22 February 2003
by Nic Gray

Rory and his crew on London Clipper remain in pole position, but 2nd place Hong Kong have managed the best daily run. The battle between Hong Kong, Glasgow and London continues this morning with only 6 miles separating all 3 on a distance to finish basis and 14 miles separating them on the water.

Jersey and Bristol continue their Southerly route but are only managing the same speed as the boats to the North of them, which will not please them as they have so much further to sail. Liverpool, Cape Town and New York remain in the middle of the fleet covering the groups to the North and South of them.

Richard the skipper of Bristol has sent the following message in this morning.

“This afternoons sched (0300 UTC) was a bit disappointing with the northern
leaders having whittled away a bit more our western lead. At the moment, we
are struggling to get weather faxes with a prognosis for the next few days
but are getting good current weather maps, from which you can form, an
opinion about what will happen next. The weather faxes from Tokyo have
better forward views and we are just beginning to pick these up which will
be essential for the final week up to Japan. In the meantime, I keep
looking at the current charts and thinking we are in a better position but
the others never seem to suffer as much as I expect! However, the low
passing to the north of them in the next 24 hours may affect their wind
either against them or just calmer.”

The Bristol crew will be please with the following report received from Glasgow this morning, and we might well see the Southern boats making gains on their Northern rivals over the next few days.

“No more fish unfortunately, but we have
stopped fishing so that probably explains it. Currently on whites, in fact
Y2,s/s + 1 reef. Have around 25 kn apparent and are sailing close
hauled/reached to stay down. Just clipping the front edge of this cold front
that keeps appearing on the sat-c weather stuff, I think.”

Finally apologies for the late posting of this report but we have been busy here at Race Control with the Around Alone Race. Two of the Class 1 boats broke their booms overnight whilst sailing in 40 + knots of wind in the Southern Ocean. Both skippers are fine and continuing on to Cape Horn where they hope to repair the booms.

Source: Clipper 2002/2003 Round The World Race Official Site