16 06 99

Position: unknown

Diane's note: In the message Laurie left for me, he was really excited about the distance the team had been able to cover but he neglected to tell me his position.

We had one of the most incredible experience of our lives for all three of us yesterday. We set off as normal prepared to sled-haul and tough it out to the end, with an average of about 26 kms. per day. So we just settled into a routine and the wind picked up. It was bright, sunny and ideal surface conditions, crisp with just a soft covering of snow to take away the hard edging. As the wind picked up we were able to use our sails. During the day we had to adjust a couple of times increasing the sail and pulling it in again.

The bottom line is that we were able to do 93.2 kms., absolutely astonishing to us! We could have done a lot more except for inexperience. I found that I was having difficulty keeping up due to my configuration or whatever.Still it's a most incredible distance, which puts us within about 60 kms. of the end of the ice cap.

So we're in pretty good shape. We didn't get to bed until 2:30 in the morning. We're just having a nice relaxing day, in the morning at least. We'll do a little bit of work later in the day, but we're now in really good shape to finish in time.

I'm sure lots of people following the web site, especially in the early days, thought that we were never going to make it. But we never lost hope and here we are within striking distance of the end.

End of transmission

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