Ecomotion/Pro 2008 Adventure Racing World Championship
Leaders Well Ahead of Predicted Pace
Rob Howard / 03.11.2008
It was just before daybreak when the leaders (Team Nike) paddled into PC5 to complete their passage of the Parnaiba Delta, pulled the boats ashore and loaded them into the waiting trucks. They had to stop here for a minimum of one hour (while the boats were moved to the end of the next 15km trekking stage), but chose to sleep for 4 instead, forgoing the lead but expecting to move faster when they got going again.Mike Kloser was restless however, as he’d lost his SPOT transmitter (dropped in the river!) and could find no one to ask about this. He wanted to know if he’d get a new one or, more importantly, if the team would be penalised.
It’s not always easy for visiting teams (none of who speak Portuguese) to find out what is happening or get advice, and Kloser was relieved to hear there would be no penalty before the team left later in the morning.
Next in were Buff, then came a rush of teams, seven of them within 7 minutes, including Motorola SOS Mata Atlantica, now the leading Brazilian team. They’d taken a different course through the many channels of the delta to almost everyone else last night, and picked a line with less wind and tide against them, moving right up the field. Powered by Velvet and their NZ compatriots Orion Health were in this bunch, but Orion had been to the bonus CP while Velvet had not.
Some teams, like Explore had also slept an hour at PC4, and their captain Mikeal Nordlind said it had been a hard night. “We always seemed to have the wind and tide against us!� He said. “These boats are so slow and then in the morning I had some great SleepMonsters, and that is why we stopped at PC4.� His team mate Petri Forsman was not enthusiastic about the stage. “It was not very interesting�, he said, “all the channels were big rivers and we expected smaller ones.� The team had gained about half an hour on Quechua by taking a portage but felt they’d missed out by not tying the boats together as Team Sole had done. At least they’d not made a navigational mistake as Bjufors did, losing time by going up the wrong channel.
The Delta is a huge area, with the river splitting into 5 channels and creating dozens of islands. As teams passed the palms and mangroves on the shore they saw a variety of birdlife (parrots, kingfishers, egrets and eagles) and a surprising number of villages. The delta is well populated by farmers with small holdings and also by crab fishermen. (They dig them out of the mud and this is the biggest crab harvesting area in Brazil.) It has also been used in an adventure race before, back in 2000 when Gerard Fusil staged the ELF in the area. This was one of the first big races in Brazil, which celebrates a decade of AR by holding the World Championships.
For the slower teams the frequency of the villages was fortunate as they needed to stop for drinks and food, and they continued to paddle across the delta throughout the day and into the second night of the race. The spread of the teams is already significant, and alarming to the organisers. In the first 24 hours the leaders gained 12 on the back markers and the speed of the race is creating logistics problems for the organisers. See All Event Posts
