BT Global Challenge - 13th September 2000

LG FLATRON leads, milk or no milk

Into Wednesday morning, and LG FLATRON have continued to lead the fleet out into the Atlantic. They have a narrow margin of eight miles from second placed Spirit of Hong Kong, with Quadstone seven behind her and Compaq just a mile further back. But in the longer term game the interesting move is the split into two packs - north and south. The most northerly boats are BP and Isle of Man - the rest of the fleet is now converging onto the low road, led by LG FLATRON.
The breeze has just shifted round to the south-west from a low pressure system and front coming in from the Atlantic. That's pushing aside the high pressure centred over the Bay of Biscay that's been keeping the wind light. The weather buoys out in the Atlantic are already showing this change, with the wind forecast to increase through today and perhaps be a little stronger in the north. It's also expected to veer to the north-west after the front passes.

But the biggest worry on-board the leading boat seems to be the milk. Having run out of the fresh stuff packed in Southampton, a search for the three bags of powdered milk drew a blank. Liz Hurst is responsible for the food aboard and reported, "I don't know what happened to the milk powder. It looks as though we are about to start 17 days without milk.

"Daypacks for food have been on the boat for two weeks. The routine was to leave things by the front door of the crew house to go to the boat every morning. When they disappeared I assumed that they went to the boat. I am not sure where the milk is now but I suspect that it went from the front door to the dressing table outside Conrad's room. It probably then went away in Richard's [Richard Kidd, BT single-legger] car with the food ready for bagging for legs five and six."

While one of the crew commented, "I don't know why we ever used to have milk on the boat anyway." Others will be scrabbling for the limited supply of herbal tea, and black coffee with honey. The cereal now comes with powdered grapefruit juice. And if anyone in Hamble spots large bags of white powder being loaded into the back of a car (always assuming that there are any cars on the roads, given the lack of go-juice), it may not, after all, be a shipment of Columbia's finest.

Logica's excitement was a little more dramatic, when they had a close run with a fishing vessel. The two boats collided almost due south of Lizard Point, just before midnight on Monday. The fishing boat came steaming in from to windward, and Logica had to bear away quickly to get out of the way. Norwich Union was only four boat lengths behind at the time and saw the crash, but weren't involved. There was a little damage to Logica's hull, but no one was injured and the boat wasn't taking on any water. In a call to the local Coastguard, skipper Jeremy Troughton reported that they were in no need of assistance. Still, plenty of excitement for a yacht only 36 hours into its round the world journey.