Tough day, rough seas for Chuan

Chinese skipper Guo Chuan, leading an international crew on a 97-foot trimaran, set sail on September 3 from Russia to attempt the first non-stop sailing world record along the Northeast Passage from Murmansk to the Bering Strait between Alaska (USA) and Russia. Here’s a the latest update…

It is a day of rough seas and another tough day for us. We made a 90 degree turn to avoid the possibility to be stuck in the ice area midnight (UTC) last night. Sailing south, we escaped the ice, but we have much stronger winds and the weather is still freezing cold.

The sea is rough. There was no way for our media crew, Tim, to stay remain in front of the monitor long enough to upload any video. The boat is jumping and shaking all day long. Nobody does anything that is not absolutely necessary; Tim nearly fell out of the bunk twice. It is like a roller coaster on the sea.

We could not sail with the full mainsail for several hours today. We had a breakdown, the cars fixing the mainsail on the mast were broken. We stopped sailing for a few hours to repair two of the cars on the main sail track, leaving the mainsail completely down for 3 hours.

So all in all, it is a tough day for all crew. Luckily, we saw the aurora last night. We are hoping it is a good omen as we are approaching the finish line. After some slow-going over the weekend, we expect to have less than a day (24 hours) of sailing remaining, just 300 miles to the finish in the Bering Strait estimated for late afternoon UTC on Tuesday.

Tracking – Updates