News
Day 1 (Mon 4th Jan 1330 - Tue 5th Jan 1330)
After the first 24 hours at sea all crews in this years race are making steady progress towards the finish. There is a surprise leader in the form of Charlie Pitcher rowing JJ. He not only leads the solo class by 7 nautical miles, but the entire fleet, having made good 30 nm through the first 24 hours. This is without doubt a remarkable achievement. In overall second place is QBE Insurance Challenger, who led off the line yesterday. They trail JJ by just 1 nm, and lead the nearest pairs boat by just 3nm. In the fours class Mission Atlantic lead both Limited Intelligence and Vivaldi by 7nm.
As stated yesterday, all the crews are travelling predominantly South so while they are covering good distance, they aren’t making direct ground to the finish.
Throughout the first day the Woodvale Office has received a number of questions regarding the progress of each crew. To clear up any confusion the VMG is velocity made good and refers to the velocity (speed) made good towards the finish line. The DMG is distance made good which is the distance travelled by a crew towards the finish line based on the shortest route (i.e. as the crow flies). A crew will always row a greater distance than the DMG, simply because they will not be able to row a shorter distance than that of the ‘crow’. The DTF is the distance to the finish and is the true measure of who is leading. Quite simply it is the distance between a crews last known position and the finish line, and crews are ordered from the least to the greatest distance from the finish on the progress page.
Each day, following the previous days rowing there will be a daily statistic, which shall note any interesting observations throughout the fleet. With that in mind, with 30 crews passing over the start line yesterday it may be of interest to note that should they all make it to the finish, they will have rowed the equivalent of half way to the moon, and after day 1 (at 1330 on Tuesday 5 January following 24 hrs of the race) they had completed a combined total of 410 nautical miles, with an average DMG of nearly 14 nautical miles (0.5% of the total race distance). It is important to bear in mind all crews are travelling south at this stage, so do not read to much into the speeds (VMG) and distances (DMG) and as such are not travelling directly for the finish line.