Explore Sweden Monster - Atlantic to Baltic
Day 3; The Race is On
Malin Andersson / 13.07.2010
The teams in Explore Sweden Monster continue their journey and today the leading teams have had to slow down their enormously fast pace. Trekking along Nordkalottleden took them longer than expected - probably because they had to spare a few hours for some badly needed sleep. On the trekking they had to fight for several hours in deep bogs. The last mile they walked along the shore of Akkajaure with a speed of only 3 km/h.
It blew up a storm on Monday night over Hellmofjorden, not far from the border to Sweden and the teams were here about to do a long leg of paddling at the time.
Silva Gerber and FJS managed to paddle through the fjord before the worst of the storm came. Sweco Karlstad in third place went out at midnight, but after a few kilometers were forced to land, due to broken kayaks.
Race Director Mikael Lindnord decided that the remaining teams would be traveling by motor boat along the fjord due to the storm. Their racing time will be adjusted at the next gear zone.
All the teams that went by boat during the storm received a penalty. They got FJS's paddling time + two hours of penalty because they had time to rest while skipping the section. "Sweco Karlstad gets only one hour of penalty because they began the paddling section but couldn't finish it", said Mikael.
"Perhaps this penalty will be to the teams’ advantage. They get the chance to sleep for many hours - sleep that you usually don't have time to take during a normal race", said Mikael.
Silva Gerber are still fighting in the lead but with one injured team member, Robert Lindberg. Robert has problems with the Achilles tendon and had to fight hard on the last trekking stage where he got help from his team mates to carry his backpack. It remains to be seen whether Silva can maintain their hard pace in spite of this injury and behind them fast teams are chasing.
FJS has earlier said that they are very hungry for revenge, since Silva won last year and FJS finished second. However it may be that the leading teams will now have to pay for their high speed at the beginning, and others will catch the. We shall see in the coming days.
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