The PowerBar Three Peaks Yacht Race
Over Snowdon and Through the Strait
Rob Howard / 24.06.2007
All the runners reported finding the conditions difficult and Jan Turzynski off Kilva summed things up. “Its was horrible,� he said, “really hard! We were in the cloud a lot of the time but the worst bit was the run back along the road from Llanberis – we just had no energy left at all. It was a shuffle.�
His running partner, Catherine Robinson, said, “My first marathon!� She was a little disappointed however that their time was just outside 6 hours.
While the majority of teams got through the night, perhaps taking a little longer than they thought, Snowdon did see the first retirement of the race. The Rev. Emyr Owen from the RNLI team was feeling unwell and retired before setting off up the mountain. His team mates decided not continue and withdrew from the race.
Keith Read and Adam Marcinowicz had no such problems. They were the first to arrive back at Cearnarfon, setting a fast time of 4 hours 4 minutes, just over an hour quicker than their nearest rivals Lightning Reflex. They were not the quickest though, Josh Shouten and Martin Beale set the impressive time of 3 hours 52 minutes, and are now favourites for the King of the Mountains title.
However, when they got back the tide was flowing against them in the Menai Strait. With little wind there were times when they rowed, and they were looking for every puff of wind to fill their sails and push them forward against the very fast flowing tide. Often they hugged the shore, and as they passed under the Britannia Bridge they could see Telford’s Bridge half a kilometre ahead of them, but that distance took them 30 minutes. At times a breeze pushed them forward more quickly, and at others the sails collapsed and they were still. And all time they had to watch for the submerged rocks in that area of the Strait.
Lighting Reflex were an hour behind, having safely sailed to the pier at Caernarfon when their engine failed. It’s a starter motor problem and they are hoping to fix it in Whitehaven. There problems were not at an end though. They couldn\'t push through between the bridges against the tide, and were caught and passed by Nunatak and White Cloud.
Most teams were caught by the foul tide, and as a result will be bunched up when the tide turns in their favour. However, Vlad the Impaler has now opened up a strong lead with their fast run and safe passage of the Strait.
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