Maiden 2 record

James Boyd caught up with skipper Brian Thompson to find about their secretive round Britain record

After starting at lunchtime on Thursday Maiden 2 rounded Muckle Flugga, the northernmost tip of the Shetlands at 1030 on Saturday morning. At the time it was still light with a northerly breeze, but once they turned south west for the 304 mile run down to the remote Hebridean outpost of St Kilda it built rapidly. This part of the trip was a blast in the strong north easterly winds, with the boat fully powered up and sailing in excess of 30 knots. Thompson said that the top speed they saw was 34 knots.

They rounded St Kilda at 0100 on Sunday morning and it was once they were heading south towards the west coast of Ireland that the sea got extremely lumpy and they were forced to throttle back. At one point they stuffed the bows in, but not to any dangerous degree. "It just showed that you can't go too fast," recalled Thompson.

They were still flying as all the local buoy data appeared to be under reading giving them the impression that the wind was lightening. "We hung on the sails, and the wind hung in with us. It was great practise for the Jules Verne. We had the water ballast in and we were sailing hard," described Thompson, who thinks that their catamaran probably performed better in these conditions that de Kersauson's tri.

They were now gybing downwind, doing long gybes out to sea - although not so far as they were expecting the wind to go round to the west - to save themselves wasting time and crew energy carrying out excess manoeuvres. They had also broken some battens during a gybe costing them time as they replaced them.

The pressure stayed with them until Sunday night when about 30 miles before rounding the south west corner of Ireland it dropped to 4-6 knots and later backed to the south west and then eventually to the south.

They spent most of Monday crossing the Celtic Sea, and in a light westerly reached the Lizard by 2000. At this point they were still well ahead of the record, but the forecast showed 5-10 knot following winds which would have made for a slow passage up the Channel. Fortunately Mother Nature smiled upon them and the wind picked up to o 18-20 knots, although the direction remained the same and they were forced to put in big gybes - on one gybe they were within 5 miles of Alderney - and once again they were punching into the tide.

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