Fossett delays departure

Back to code red for the Cheyenne team

11:15GMT:

After meeting this morning with navigator Stan Honey and water leader Dave Scully and having discussed the forecast with meteorologist Ken Campbell, Steve Fossett has decided to stand down from setting off on his attempt on the non-stop round the world record today. All the crew were called to Plymouth as a departure today had looked likely.

"We won't be leaving this afternoon," Honey told thedailysail. "It just got increasingly marginal. It was never a super attractive window, but the weather changes and sometimes marginal windows get better. This one didn't.

"Getting out of the UK was going to be pretty good and it was going to be a pretty good trip at first across the Bay of Biscay and then we had a bit of a ridge across the Bay of Biscay and a trough off Finistere. But the major problem was the high would close the gate at the Canaries. And if you look at all of that aggregate was it just wasn't good enough to go."

The ideal weather is scenario would be to have a giant high pressure system dominating the north Atlantic. "Then you tend to have strong trade winds," says Honey. "This has instead been a progressive weather system where you had lots of transiting lows and lots of southwesterlies in the Channel. There have been a couple of slots where you could get out of the Channel okay, but there has never been a slot where you could get the rest of the job done."

At present Honey says he can't see an ideal weather window lining up in the next couple of weeks. "In terms of the big picture, the season for starting these events tends to run though well into the middle of March and there hasn't been a good departure window yet this season. There are typically 2-3 per year so it is not too alarming just yet.

"The boat is ready. The crew is psyched, so we will go into a bit of a rotation," he concluded.