660 nautical miles to go!

Panatlantic
Sun 20 Jan 2008 22:36
Dear All,
Just to give you a quick update on Niall and James' position. I have just spoken to Niall, and he wants to thank all of you who have been texting them, please keep them flowing as they really need the support and love reading them! Regarding the laptop, it is still broken, and quite probably kaput! Thank you for the suggestions you have sent for fixing it, unfortunately having tried many of your ideas, they can still only turn the computer on in safe mode. From this they can read emails that were sent before last Saturday when it broke, but they cannot establish a network connection in safe mode and therefore cannot receive or send any more messages. They have been receiving torrential rain over the last few days and therefore their power is running very low, so at the moment they have had to put a halt on trying any more ways to get the laptop working, but hope to have another go again soon...

....This does mean that they have had more time and effort to row though! Which is exactly what they've been doing as you will have seen on the Woodvale website. Their progress has increased significantly over the last few days, which is due to a number of reasons:
    Firstly, a huge swell has developed pushing them relatively in the right direction towards Antigua, though with an occasional SW direction which is why they have dropped further South than ideally wanted. This swell is providing an uncomfortable ride, with waves constantly crashing over the sides, but with the 14 knots they have been achieving down the other side and an average of 4 knots per hour last night for at least 4 hours, I'm sure they are not really complaining!
    Secondly, from 2 days ago, they have started doing cross over shifts where they row for 10 minutes together every hour. This doesn't make a huge difference, but those extra 2 or so miles a day certainly add up and carry them further away from the chasing pack!

In my last update, they were just about holding off Mission Atlantic, Ocean Summit and Row of Life by 40 nmiles. This lead has now extended to 70 nmiles which is fantastic, especially now the excitement is building following Pura Vida's finish yesterday morning in Antigua! (Well done to the whole Pura Vida team, you really deserve it and were great to track across the ocean!). At the moment, Komale is estimated to arrive in Antigua on Feb 4th. Obviously as we know, anything can happen with the weather, so fingers crossed that the current conditions hold, allowing them to arrive earlier than this and have a longer holiday in Antigua!

Right, I'll leave you there after my 'quick' update, but just to say 2 more things:

1) Thank you again for all the texts - and please keep sending them. Support, news, jokes, updates, random texts with no meaning...to +881631638247 via the Iridium website: http://messaging.iridium.com
     They will obviously update the blog when they get to Antigua.

2) Please please keep donating money to the Panatlantic charity, it's a great cause helping out Bristol Zoo with the Cameroon large apes project as I'm sure you'd rather the gorillas over there were protected and cared for rather than being killed for the illegal bushmeat trade! To donate your hard earned cash please go to:

http://www.justgiving.com/rachelbrixey_drink

and pledge a drink of your choice to the boys for when they finish - let's see what strange and wonderful collection of drinks we can get for them. I'm sure many of you are planning to buy them a drink when they get back home anyway :) so you can direct your money this way instead which I'm sure would be appreciated all the more. Alternatively, just follow the donation link from the Panatlantic website straight to the Panatlantic charity Just Giving page. Don't forget that Niall and James aren't just doing this for a (fantastic) personal achievement, but also to really raise the awareness for all the good work of Bristol Zoo, especially for CWAF - Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund, and really want to be able to give them as much money as possible. This is why they went to the effort of setting up their own registered charity to support this cause (rather than choosing a more popular charity, e.g.cancer, who while do great work, receive lots of donations already).
Many thanks in advance for your support.

Rachel






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