Speed freaks

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

Paul Larsen described what it was like on the helm. "You sail these boats to go fast. It was just fantastic - hitting those speeds up around 40 knots. We've all done 29 knots. If you're doing 40 time and time again, after four hours, if you slow down to 30 knots, it's like going from 120mph to 70 in a car. The boat was in such beautiful trim. You have perfect control. It is like driving a sports car instead of a family car. You have to give much credit to the designers. On Team Adventure [Cam Lewis' sistership to Maiden II] we seemed to have a lot of weather helm."

It was Fraser Brown who was at the wheel when Maiden II struck 44 knots, taking over from Sharon Ferris' previous best of 40.6 knots on the log. "He was on the helm for a minute," explained Larsen. "He heated up to much and got a speeding ticket from Brian [Thompson]. Brian kept saying 'we don't want to be doing 42 knots, we want to be doing 34', but you just can't help it. The boat seemed to be just loving it. The main thing was not to heat up and go off course."

However Larsen was more than aware of the dangers. "If you're steering that hot it is just a matter of time before you hit a wave. It always seems like a bows down boat, but you start to get a lot of confidence. The leeward forward beam seemed to be just inches above the water. The worst parts were when both front beams went in." On those occasions those on winches can lose control of the sheets and the crew are very aware that has the potential for disaster.

During the record attempt, they were constantly comparing their progress to PlayStation's and in particular the average speed she had maintained during her record attempt. "We never dropped below the average," said Cahalan. "The lowest we got to was only 0.1knot above the average. that's when - about eight hours before the end - it was like Playstation was right next to us. And then we started to edge ahead. In the last hour had to do 26 miles to get in front of them".

They never changed sails, except to throw out a reef hurriedly when the wind went soft half way into the attempt. "If we had made a sail change our average would have had to go up two knots," explains Cahalan. But towards the end of the 24 hour period when the wind had built up again, they were finding the boat overpowered with full main.

Smokin... this is before water pressure folded the leeward stanchion...