On The Road Again pt2

Tracy Edwards continues her interview with James Boyd discussing her plans for Maiden II and a new boat...

To read part one of this article...click here.

In Marseilles at the end of The Race, Club Med finished looking as though her doors were about to fall off. Blocks had been pulling out of the deck and running repairs had been made with lashings. The mainsheet track had started to lift off and was lashed right around the aft beam. Dalton's team also experienced problems with the main beam fairing (as they did to a more serious degree on Team Adventure) and saw stress cracks developing around the beam to hull joint. During a Mistral in the summer while she was out of the water in La Ciotat in the south fo France, she fell off her cradle badly damaging her rudders.

Since then Edwards says Club Med has had a major refit and "structurally she is very sound". So the team are off at the end of the week to go and look at their new beast. "We're not going to do any work on the boat," says Edwards. "We're even going to start with the old sails. We're really just going to get out there on the water and start doing some training. Bruno recommended those sides that they put on the cockpit and Grant did too. But we won't do that until November."

In terms of improvements Edwards says that they will be concentrating on the sails. "The key to the boat is sail development. The first thing that everyone said when they got off the boat was if we'd had the right sails we could have taken 2-3 days off our time." This responsibility lies with Sharon Ferris.

With possibly four of the new generation boats undetaking Jules Verne attempts next year, the start line looks like it may be quite busy... Edwards sees it as being a good thing. "It just makes it better. I think you race faster when you are racing against a boat. There's a subtle difference. You're racing against the ghost boat and you've got their log and you know where they are and you know what weather they're going to get for the next week, but there's that thing of having that other boat out there, that other group of people which I think could be key to driving the Jules Verne record down even more. Everyone says they race faster on a record attempt when they are racing another boat. It could be a pre-race Race."

Another significant hurdle Edwards must cross is in getting sponsorship for her project. She is looking to raise £5 million. "We've really held back from approaching people until we got the boat. We wanted to go in with a bang and go "listen - this is not a picture on a proposal. This is the boat, this is the team this is the challenge and that is what you buy into." They have now sent out their proposals and says Edwards "the feedback has been overwhelming. I shouldn't be surpised, but I was saying 'oh my God I've risked everything in this climate - what am I doing?' Maybe there's a feel good factor needed."

Continued on page 2...