Fixed!

Four men up the mast for six hours Sunday and Cheyenne's mast track issues are resolved

Day 37
Position at 0505GMT: 52deg 59.900S 91deg 25.680W
Course/speed: 90deg 18.5 knots
TWS/TWA: 15.0 knots 360deg

Following the damage to their mainsheet track over the weekend the crew of Cheyenne made use of the relatively light Southern Ocean conditions yesterday to beaver away 120ft up in the air repairing the broken piece of track.

Steve Fossett reported late last night (at 2359 GMT) on the repair: "I can't believe these guys fixed the mast. With a "Do it now" attitude, the Cheyenne crew mobilised on Sunday morning to make the necessary repairs. As reported earlier, a section of mainsail track on the mast ripped off early Saturday morning. The initial repair plan was to anchor in a protected bay in the Falkland Islands to attempt the repairs. The suspense of not knowing if it was repairable was too great - and the crew attacked the problem at sea three days from Cape Horn.

"Justin Slattery and Dave Scully were up the mast for over six hours during the day. The first challenge was to remove the 13 screws which had sheared off. This required drilling and use of Easy Out tools. Then a similar section was removed from the the Third Reef location and fitted to the more important first reef point. Meanwhile Mike Beasley fabricated a replacement third reef track out of damaged and miscellaneous spares. Mike and Damian Foxall went up the mast to install the replacement.

"Without a successful fix, Cheyenne was limited to raising the mainsail only to the second reef, a restriction which would have made it impossible to sail fast enough to break the record of Orange. Sure, we lost a lot of time on this whole episode, but now we are again in the hunt for the record. - Steve."

While carrying out repairs yesterday their daily average was still 346 miles, leaving them ahead of Orange's record by 1,830 miles and around 960 miles ahead of Geronimo's 'fast' time to Cape Horn last year. Cape Horn this morning is still 822 miles away.