Speed freaks

madforsailing spoke to Adrienne Cahalan and Paul Larsen about Maiden II's 24 hour record

Aside from the occasion Steve Fossett's then brand new maxi-catamaran PlayStation went out on her maiden voyage, Maiden II's recent feat is one of the rare occasions when a maxi-cat has set out with the sole intention of breaking the 24 hour record. But it was touch and go right to end as navigator Adrienne Cahalan and Australian helmsman Paul Larsen explained over the phone to madfor sailing from on board.

To make the attempt, Cahalan says that Newport, Rhode Island was a good place to start from. "We needed quite a lot of runway. We needed 25-30 knots and we needed to do with sailing in the same direction." They were also lucky with the conditions. "It was asking quite a lot. We only waited three weeks, that's quite a short lead up time." Cahalan had analysed the weather charts and taken the 110ft catamaran to a point 250 miles SSE of Newport to hook up with a weather system.

In fact they arrived at 'point zero' too soon and had to wait five hours for the wind to build. "Then we hoisted sails and turned right, " said Cahalan. The trip began early evening (GMT) on Wednesday night. "We were in front of a low. Eventually it passed off to the northeast. We were going at 105deg - east south east direction. So it was quite warm the whole time."

The course - just south of due east - was deliberate as the team did not want to have to negotiate the fog and ice they might have encountered had they been heading back to Europe on the great circle that would have taken them close to Newfoundland and the Grand Banks. "It was so nice not to have to sail from A to B. you could find the boat's speed spot and just hold it," commented Paul Larsen. On this course they were holding a wind angle of 125deg.

Many speed sailing record attempts have been made in these waters - illbruck's recent monohull 24 hour record (and Bernard Stamm's before her) - because the Gulf Stream can flow at anything up to four knots. But Cahalan believes this did not help them much. "We only had the stream for about six hours. It contributes a couple of knots, but we lost it again when we went through a cold eddy." When they passed through this counter current, it not only worked against them, but they had to slow down due to rough seas. Aside from this 2 knots of current does not make a huge difference when you're constantly sailing at 30+ knots.

"At around dawn local time, the wind speed dropped out to 14 knots," continued Cahalan. "So for a couple of hours we only averaged 21 hours, compared to the first six hours when we averaged about 31 knots." But the most impressive moments came right at the beginning of the 24 hour period.

"In the first hour we averaged 33.8 knots, that's when we did 44 knots on the GPS," she said. "We had 28 knots of breeze and a flat sea which is the key. Later on, trouble started when the sea started to build."

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