Communications failure leaves Sir Robin trailing
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Article Date: 2007-01-31
View Count: 700
Technical difficulties in the Southern Ocean, south of New Zealand have forced Robin Knox-Johnston to resort to manually reading the weather conditions as he slipped further behind in the Velux 5 Oceans round-the-world race.
This morning (January 31st), Sir Robin found himself over 100 miles behind Kiwi skipper Graham Dalton as he was unable to make any tactical manoeuvres due to the breakdown of his Fleet 77 satellite communications terminal that normally allows him to download weather forecasts.
Fans of the legendary 67-year-old will remember his 1969 voyage when he became the first man to sail non-stop around the world single-handed after having severe technical problems.
In his latest blog entry, Knox-Johnston noted: "Spent a lot of today working on comms but I think we have exhausted our possibilities with the new iridium… Why it worked okay to start with and then suddenly went difficult I do not understand."
However, he consoled himself with "a good bottle of red wine" which he was forced to cork as he "could not find the corkscrew".
With his customary attention to detail, the Brit explained: "That meant I could not seal the top so I decanted the contents into an empty whisky bottle. The red wine is now slightly fortified."
Now in fifth place, Knox-Johnston is the last British hope in the race after Mike Golding and Alex Thompson were forced to retire after suffering technical difficulties last year.
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