The PowerBar Three Peaks Yacht Race
Starship\'s Troopers
Rob Howard / 25.06.2009
Both pairs were passed on the mountain by the team off Topsham Toe in the Water, Patrick Wallis and Paul Williams, who have set fast times throughout the race. Wallis returned saying they’d not seen any other teams, but they’d taken a direct route up across the zig-zag path at the top and bypassed the two Tilman teams. It was a route choice that went slightly wrong as they got ‘lost’ on the summit plateau and felt they’d lost around 5 minutes and maybe the chance of setting the fastest Ben Nevis time. (They were just 5 minutes slower than the fastest time.)
Behind them the two runners from Starship, Andy Evans and Jim Charles, were giving the final run their all and managing to stay ahead of their rivals from Torbellino. They kept that lead all the way to the finish and crossed the line at 18.25, just 9 minutes ahead of Torbellino, which is a slim margin after 5 days of racing!
Their crew was not there waiting for them – though they turned up shortly. Charles collapsed asking for water but Evans, who is part owner of the Sigma 38 with two others on the team was more talkative.
“Jim and I did the first run on Snowdon,� he said, “but I fell and banged my knee and virtually had to walk the last 8 miles back along the road. We took a break on Scafell as we are not such good cyclists as the others (Stuart Quine and Mark Lewis), and today it was our turn again. We’ve all been rowing almost non-stop and couldn’t have done any more.�
“We hadn’t originally planned to enter the Tilman, but when our runners got injured we decided to give it a go ourselves and we started training around January.� When I told him I thought they were the first Tilman finisher he still had the energy to jump up and call the rest of the team over. (The result is still to be officially confirmed but once it is they will be one very happy team!)
SleepMonsters
