Just finished 2/3 20 mile days.

Exhausted!

Jo

News from the Polar Race Organisers

Canadian or International Waters?

Published: Saturday, 23rd April 2011 21:30

Strange but true!

Our racers are going through an area where we traditionally always encounter bad communications: The Maclean Strait.

We could never understand the problem until the last race when webmaster Chris Walker made determined efforts to find out why. He discovered to our amazement that this area is not recognised by the USA as Canadian waters and that this is in dispute. Consequently our Canadian registered Satellite phones which use the American (government backed) Iridium system fail to be recognised and for about 36 hours communications can be very patchy.

Ryan Malfara, who handles Team Internationals comms however had the “wit of mind” to use one of our other contact numbers through to our Checkpoint Team, (and got through) still sitting at the top of Bathurst Island who relayed an approx position to us, which showed them as having done 18 nautical miles and still in the tracks of Slugs. This shows that they are both making determined efforts to make the KCI Checkpoint for the final push for home.

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