Birds fly south

Emma Richards and Mikaela von Koskull make their final preps for the Jacques Vabre

Tracy Edwards will be proud. Two of her girls will be taking women's sailing a further step forward this Sunday when Emma Richards and Mikaela von Koskull set sail in the Transat Jacques Vabre.

Bubbly Scots girl, Richards sailed this bi-annual two handed race two years ago with former Pindar team mate Miranda Merron aboard Pete Goss' Vendee Globe Open 50 and this time both Richards and Merron are back with their own projects. Merron has taken charge of a fairly ancient, although much breathed upon Open 60, once upon a time Alain Gautier's race winner from the 1993/4 Vendee Globe. Richards, however, has taken the bold step of entering the first women's team on a 60ft trimaran.

Women on board 60ft trimarans is a rarity, but not new in France. This will be the first major offshore race for the new Sergio Tacchini trimaran of the highly talented Karine Fauconnier.

But most famous of all has been Florence Arthaud. She campaigned trimarans for more than a decade during the 1980s culminating in her winning the prestigeous Route de Rhum on board her trimaran Pierre 1er ahead of a fleet of top French male sailors.

By chance rather than design it happens that the boat Richards and von Koskull have entered in the Transat Jacques Vabre is this exact same trimaran. This design by Marc van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot Prevost, best known as Arthaud's boat in France, is better known in Anglo-Saxon circles as Lakota, Steve Fossett's record breaker prior to PlayStation. In this the American millionaire set all manner of sailing records from Round Britain and Ireland to singlehanded across the Pacific.

Earlier this year Fossett sold the boat to Atlant, Johan Salen and Richard Brisius' yachting company in Sweden, responsible for the Assa Abloy Volvo Ocean Race campaign. The boat joined two other 60ft trimarans in Atlant's Oops! Cup circuit. Richards and Finnish former Maiden crewwoman von Koskull, took charge of the boat in July and have been preparing for the race ever since.