The world's fastest Anglo-Saxon

James Boyd spoke to Orange's Australian crewman Nick Moloney

Nick Moloney with his parents...

Nick Moloney was the only non-Frenchman on board Orange for their Jules Verne Trophy record attempt and for Nick arriving, as he predicted in 64-65 days, it was a double whammy - for today was his 34th birthday too.

To add to the emotion his parents had secretly flown all the way from Australia to greet their son. "Mum - all the way from Australia - I couldn't believe it when I saw her. It was incredible," commented Moloney on the dockside grinning from ear to ear, his eyes red with tears. "It's the most amazing thing ever."

Moloney has already taken part in the Whitbread Round the World Race as part of Paul Standbridge's Toshiba crew and was part of the OneAustralia America's Cup team. He is well documented as claiming to have three major goals he wants to achieve in sailing. After the Whitbread, he achieved his second today. Next is the 2004/5 Vendee Globe Challenge and he is working with Mark Turner and Ellen MacArthur at Offshore Challenges to try and achieve his hat trick.

"It's hard for people to realise how big a dream this has been for me," Moloney told madfor sailing. "I think this is the biggest one [of his goals]. Trying to be the fastest - I think it is the ultimate speed record, for all of us who dare to fly nowadays and just be fast in the most modern machines available and go hammer."

Moloney almost achieved his 'non-stop round the world as fast as possible' goal when he set out on The Race as part of Steve Fossett's crew on PlayStation, but after they trashed a brand new set of Cuben fibre sails and then broke a daggerboard, Fossett chose to retire.

"It's good to hold the top trophy and that what it feels like to me like a top Trophy," continued Moloney of today's success. "I was really disappointed to miss out on the Atlantic record with Steve [Fossett] and everybody else but I knew something good would come my way . Steve had some reservations about doing The Race, he wanted to do the Jules Verne, I wanted to do the Jules Verne, but he said we'd got to go and do The Race, so we had to do The Race and honour our word."

Compared to the Volvo/Whitbread Moloney thinks the Jules Verne Trophy has been the bigger deal for him. "This has a bit more impact because of the distance. The longest leg we did [on the Whitbread] was 36 days or something and it's a big difference. And even if it is 64 days it's the distance still - you know you're watching it on the chart, you're doing the full autour du monde so it is just massive mentally, especially if you've been down the track before and you know the ground being covered and you have so many reservations. There's the period in the south which are quite marginal for these boats, but fortunately was good for us apart from South Africa - that was a bit hair raising - and the Indian Ocean - that was just pathetic for us. But after we got to Australia the sun came out, we put the boot into it and we just took off".

Their main concern over the last few days has obviously been the broken titanium ball bearing at the foot of the mast, that nearly finished off their record attempt. "In all honesty mate we're fortunate to be here. That rig could have come down at any time at all. I know there'll be a lot of people who'll say "oh that was a media thing" but 100% it felt like we were going to lose the rig and that we simply didn't think we were going to finish and that was something that was very difficult for everyone to handle. Ronan [le Goff, who discovered the problem] went to have a look and when he came back he didn't know what to say or what to do".

Fortunately their on board composites expert Yves le Blevec with the help of the designers at Gilles Ollier and Associates, were able to fashion a repair of sorts, but most importantly later they managed to cure the cause of the breakage - a blockage in the mast bearing lubrication system. This they ingeniously cleared using the compressed air from a diving bottle.

"At first I was like, who cares, forget about it, let's keep going, don't stop the pace, but obviously the boys got behind it and got on the phone and got some advice on how to fix it and went about a repair and did a good job. And yesterday afternoon we had a bit of a Monty, you know, big breeze, big genniker, and if she was ever going to come down it was then. So they've done a great job."

Ellen greets Nick in front of the massive crowd of on lookers...