It's breakfast time on Sunday morning, and Spirit of Cardiff has passed yet another milestone. We're east of Taiwan, and we've just crossed the Tropic of Cancer. The last time we crossed it, heading south, was in the Red Sea, north of Jeddah. Only two more crossings, in Baja California, Mexico and near the Bahamas, and we're home.
It's six weeks today since we left Cardiff, and five weeks since we started the officially timed circumnavigation from Gibraltar, and whilst we haven't yet reached the halfway point in terms of distance, we're fairly close in terms of time.
In the 35 days since leaving Gibraltar, we've covered approximately 9,800 miles. That averages out at a not very impressive 280 miles a day at 11.6 knots. But of course we've encountered significant downtimes not of our making - three days in Malta waiting for spares to arrive and storms to go, a day in Port Said waiting to go through the canal, half a day in Galle through their harbour restrictions, and five days in Singapore (which includes limping in twice on our wing engine, and waiting for spares). That adds up to nine and a half days of time lost. Take that out of the 35 we've been running since Gibraltar, and things look a lot better.
9,800 miles over 25.5 running days works out at 384 miles a day, averaging 16 knots (Cable & Wireless Adventurer's overall average was 13.57 knots over a route some 600 miles shorter than ours), and that's including the normal if rather lengthy time we've spent on refuelling stops.
We'd always set our original target of 50 days around the world partly based on our having ground crews to meet us at each port, ensuring a speedy one-hour turn-round. With the absence of any major sponsorship, the ground crews were first to be slashed from the budget. With the bargain basement circumnavigation, we're having to do the refuelling and dealing with bureaucracy ourselves (albeit with the fantastic assistance of our many supporters around the world), which inevitably leads to longer stops in port.
Cable & Wireless Adventurer's around the world record is 74 days 20 hours 58 minutes. That means that we can arrive in Gibraltar any time on the 20th June and still be within their record. In fact we could arrive within the early hours of the 21st and still (just) break it.
With 15,200 miles to go, and a daily average of 384 miles, that means another 39.5 days to go. Or to put it another way, arriving in Gibraltar some time on the 19th June. Other factors to take into account are the Panama Canal - that one will reduce the daily average. Unlike the Suez Canal, the Panama has huge locks to take big ships - there'll be no way of cheating the system and going through quicker there.
But on the other hand, we've also had a lot of unexpected bad weather, and many of the third world stops have been unduly long. We're not expecting our stops along both coasts of the USA to take so long, because once we've cleared customs and immigration once, we won't have to keep on doing it. So we may well make up time there.
Ultimately, whenever we arrive in Gibraltar, we'll set a new record for the under fifty foot class, making us the fastest, smallest boat ever to circumnavigate the world. But even now we have the Cable & Wireless record in our sights, and we're still in with a better than average chance of taking it. The only thing that can stop us now is lack of funds.
Clive Tully
Copyright Clive Tully ©2002
Report transmitted by Iridium satellite network