Yachting-Live

Fedor On Code Red Iceberg Alert
Day 60: Fedor Konyukhov, the Russian solo yachtsman trailblazing a record circumnavigation around the Antarctica Cup Racetrack is calling for ‘water…no Ice’ today after learning of icebergs as high as 45S that are threatening his route across the South Atlantic.

C-CORE, the Canadian iceberg-tracking agency, can detect bergs as small as 100m in size and has warned of one at 45S 8W, the same latitude that Fedor is sailing along. The problem for Konyukhov is the millions of bergy bits and growlers that will have broken off these mega icebergs and drifted further north, which neither the satellites nor the radar on Fedor’s 85ft yacht Trading Network Alye Parusa’ can pick up.

Race organisers based in Albany, Western Australia, the start and finish point for this record attempt, have already closed the inner lane of this 3-lane Racetrack between 55-60S because of the thousands of bergs now drifting northwards from the Ross Sea. Today, they have issued a Temporary Rules Relaxation applicable to SECTORS 11 and 12 of the Racetrack and have instructed Konyukhov to adopt a Waypoint of 44S, 10W. This requires Fedor to sail outside the northern boundary (45°S) of the Outer Lane for a period of time. The next mandatory Waypoint is 45S, 0W/0E (Prime Meridian). Fedor will not incur time penalties whilst sailing under these instructions. Race Control anticipate receiving more iceberg tracking data today to assist the monitoring of iceberg presence on the Racetrack and may issue further instructions at a later date.

At least the weather is co-operating. Lee Bruce, Fedor’s American based weather router reports: Fedor is making his way north-east to skirt the icebergs predicted to the south of his track across Sectors 11 and 12 of the SOUTH ATLANTIC ZONE of the Racetrack. This forecast assumes trying to make the proposed ice waypoint of 44S 10W. It would be best to get to 44S sooner because NNW 40-50 knots is forecast for portions of the 28th/29th March.

www.antarcticacup.com

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 9:07 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.