Who next and When?
17:10, 22 June 2003
by Colin de Mowbray

The excitement of the first two finishers has past and all eyes are now looking at who will be next into Cape Town and when. Both these questions are extremely difficult to answer. London and New York now seem to share the same part of the ocean according to the schedule and the wind has died making any estimate of arrival time extremely tricky. The local weather forecaster at the airports explains that the dominating high pressure will move slowly to the east and a light westerly wind should develop over the area. This is not especially good news but with calms and winds of around 5 knots today has been immensely frustrating for the boats out at sea.

Hardest hit has been Glasgow whose well intentioned move to the south ended up in failure as instead of the expected wind shift they became becalmed off Cape Aghulas. This may have been helpful in increasing their geographical knowledge of this stunning coast but did little for the humour onboard. Thankfully Rupert Parkhouse has now taken Glasgow round the Cape and is making progress up the coast. Hong Kong also fell back but has made yet one more spirited recovery to hang on Liverpool's shirt tails.

Cape Town had ended up at dawn getting into a serious wind hole and being left further behind. Roger Steven-Jennings reluctantly took the difficult but correct decision to retire from this race. The rules are written so that the last boat can do this and still have one point which means in effect they will not loose out, although they will naturally be very disappointed.

The action on the ocean may be in slow motion at present but there is still lots to play for. The current ETAs, calculated at a notional 5 knots are:
London and New York 0500 GMT 0700 Local Time
Cape Town 0530 GMT 0730 Local Time
Liverpool and Hong Kong 1000 GMT 1200 Local Time
Glasgow 1300 GMT 1500 Local Time

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