I finally finished the Barcelona World Race Game on April 11, in a very respectable eighth place overall. Not bad, considering I was in worse than 4,000th place (out of more than 40,000 competitors) one month in, in late January. I gradually clawed (or clewed? — sailing joke) my way up in the rankings, starting around South Africa. I made good time across the Indian Ocean, really zipped across the Pacific, then did extremely well in the northbound Atlantic stage. That’s what really helped me “jump the queue.”
Here’s a map of my route:
Overall, I took 101 days and a bit more than 8 hours to finish, sailing 27,947 nautical miles (almost 52,000km) around the world, giving me an average speed of about 11.5 knots (my maximum speed reached was 20.43 kts). Far too many sleep hours (and waking hours, for that matter) were “lost” on this adventure, which brought me no real gain — not the first-place prize of a trip around the world, nor any of the six stage prizes — but a major sense of satisfaction as well as some shame at having spent (a nice word for “wasted”) so much time on it…
Stage-by-stage:
- Barcelona – Gibraltar : 4 days 14:31:29
- Gibraltar – Cape of Good Hope : 30 days 7:03:34
- Cape of Good Hope – Cook Strait : 21 days 11:28:52
- Cook Strait – Cape Horn : 13 days 17:23:40
- Cape Horn – Gibraltar : 27 days 17:00:57
- Gibraltar – Barcelona : 3 days 11:45:45