Lewis throws down gauntlet over transatlantic match race

...which Steve Fossett tells James Boyd he has no interest in picking up.

Cam Lewis, skipper of the American maxi catamaran Team Adventure, has announced that he has challenged Steve Fossett, skipper of PlayStation to a 3,000 mile match race across the Atlantic Ocean as the two boats attempt to break the west to east transatlantic record between New York and the Lizard this summer. But Steve Fossett tells us that he has no plans to take part in a race across the Atlantic.

Fossett had planned to set out on the record 10 days ago and had set his team on 'Code Green'. He was about to move his 125ft catamaran down to New York from Newport, Rhode Island, when router Bob Rice indicated that the weather situation had turned unfavourable. Fossett has since stood down and is about to return to New Zealand where a weather window is opening for him to make another attempt to become the first person to travel around the world non-stop singlehanded in a balloon - his fifth attempt at this record.

"Cam hasn't contacted me," Fossett told madforsailing. "And I'm not sure it is meaningful because I'm tied up with my balloon project through the middle of August and they're all ready to go." He adds that racing Team Adventure is of no interest to him. "When we do attempt it, it will be an unequivocal attempt to do exactly that. It will not be a race."

Fossett says that racing Team Adventure across the Atlantic would be too much of a distraction. "In a race, you race to cross the finish line. In a record attempt we would not hesitate to pull out and go again at a different time." PlayStation is still in Newport and her crew is now stood down. If his balloon voyage goes ahead the earliest Fossett would consider making an attempt is September.

So it seems highly unlikely the proposed match race will take place, but it will put Cam Lewis and his crew in a better position to become the first to break the elusive west-east record. This was set in June 1990 by Serge Madec and the French crew of the catamaran Jet Services V in a time of 6 days, 13 hours, 3 min, and 32 sec at an average speed of 18.42 knots.

Lewis, from Lincolnville in Maine, will be joined by the talented Swiss/French multihull sailor Laurent Bourgnon who will be his co-skipper. Lewis and Bourgnon have raced together extensively in the past and won the TwoStar together on Bourgnon's trimaran Primagaz in 1994. Two years ago, sailing the same trimaran, renamed Foncia Immoblier, Lewis and Bourgnon narrowly missed breaking the west to east transatlantic record when they ran out of wind only 46 miles from the finish. Theirs was the closest of nine attempts in the last 11 years to break Jet Services' record.

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