An Aussie's view of the EDS - pt3

In this final part Nick Moloney talks about Ellen, sailing with girls and looks forward to the final leg

The final leg

This leg from Boston back across to the finish in St Malo is my biggest focus as it'll be my first opportunity to effectively run an Open 60 as Ellen's got to go back to Europe. It's a body of water I've spent a lot of time in. In 1997 we set a 24 hour record there on Toshiba and we did several passages with PlayStation attempting to break the 24 hour record and I really enjoy that part of the world. I like the idea of seeing icebergs and getting some really heavy running conditions and hopefully it will all come together for us. Ideally we get out there, it gets gnarly and we break the 24 hour record and win the leg.

For me the 24 hour record is really important, so don't be surprised to see Kingfisher disappear off for 24 hours! I don't think there's a cash prize with the Trophy. Certainly last time on Toshiba all we got was a can of beer, a cold meat pie and a pat on the back.

But that period of 36 hours it took us to get the record - we took the final 24 hour slab out and got 434.4 miles - was an incredible time of my life we were all on deck the whole time and were just hauling arse.

I think this is where my experience should pay. I come from an arena where we've always pushed. So when we're running downwind in fresh air, if you lose control of the spinnaker and you wipe out, how do you get the gear down? The boat's on its ear, the spinnaker is outside the boat flapping its head off in the middle of the North Atlantic. It's freezing cold and the guys are struggling to stay on the boat. How do you bring the whole equation back together?

But we've got a superb crew for the last leg. Brian Thompson (right) is going to haul the mail - he's an awesome helmsman. Herve Jan (who was on Club Med in The Race) has a similar experience with high apparent wind angles and is capable of driving at high speed. Then we've got Adrienne (Cahalan) who's a fantastic navigator. She came in on leg one to see how the systems work on the boat. Similarly Brian came in on leg two to get more acquainted with the boat for leg five. Unfortunately it was a gut buster. Brian was out there, the big tall man that he is with these 3ft long locks of hair just streaming out of the side of his wet weather jacket and with his wrap-around sunglasses he looked like some dude driving a Cadillac!

Nick Moloney is aiming to do the next Vendee Globe.