Thanks for following Matteo’s adventure, your support really means a lot to him. I have received a few questions about Matteo’s route and the distance he has covered so thought I would share this with you to help explain the numbers.

Matteo has a tracking device on the boat called a ‘yellow brick tracker’ this device sends his position every fours hours and from this calculates his speed, his bearing and the distance he has covered in the past 24 hours. The tracker updates at the following times 0800/1200/1600/2000/0000/04000 (UK time). The final most important calculation is the DTF – Distance to finish, this is how the order of the boats in the race is calculated.

As the distance to finish is worked out on a straight line some boats that appear on the map behind Matteo but are closer to the red line (more about the red line later) will appear higher on the leader board.

Although the order of the leader board is based on the distance to the finish, the distance shown is the actual distance Matteo has rowed.

The red line is the shortest route boats could take, however this does not account for race conditions such as wind, waves and currents. The boats will each plot a slightly different route and as such the total distance they row will all be different. This explains why on the leader board Matteo has actually rowed further than some boats higher up the leader board, as Matteo has chosen a more Southerly route (away from the red line).

All the measurements on the tracking systems are in nautical miles (nm), the total distance between La Gomera and Antigua is approximately 2554nm this converts to roughly 3000 miles – there are many online converters that convert nautical miles to miles or kilometers.

So where does this leave Matteo, well he has rowed 916.5 nautical miles (1055miles / 1697kms) he is currently in 18th position overall and 3rd position for the solos. Matteo has completed quarter of the race and now has 1827 nautical miles left to row.

Hopefully this helps to explain the numbers but if you have more questions I will do my best to answer them.

Best wishes

Becky