Heading south

Cheyenne passes the Cape of Good Hope, while heading for shortest course around the world

Position at 0510: 46deg 20.950S 18deg 38.750E
Course and speed: 129deg 17.4 knots
TWS and TWA: 19 knots 274deg

With Monday's potentially devasting forestay problems behind them hopefully Steve Fossett and the crew of Cheyenne this morning at 0439.07 GMT passed the longitude of the Cape of Good Hope, 17 days, 23 hrs 29 minutes after starting at an average of just over 15 kts (as measured along the minimum course distance) from the start.

Fossett and his team appear to be taking a dramatically different approach to previous campaigns in how they tackle the Southern Ocean. At present they are down to 46deg while the last two attempts by Orange and Geronimo (see chart above) were respectively at 38degS and 40degS at this stage of their circumnavigations.

The advantage of this is that the maxi catamaran will be able to sail a substantially shorter course. The disadvantage of this is that Cheyenne will have to be a lot more careful about the conditions. Into the 40s they will be very much more in the direct path of the Southern Ocean depressions and these are capable of bringing with them treacherous seas that do not make for fast progress even in a maxi-cat. Although Cheyenne is a bigger heavier cat than the original generation of Ollier G-class catamarans and therefore presumably needs more breeze to keep her on pace the bigger conditions she is likely to experience at this latitude will also take a greater toll on the gear on board.

Fingers crossed.

Brian Thompson sent this message

We have just passed the longitude of the Cape of Good Hope having travelled from Ushant in just under 18 days, putting us 450 miles ahead of Orange at the same line. We are all very pleased with that considering all the repairs we have done since entering the Southern Ocean. I estimate that we lost 150 miles in the forestay incident, but we were so close to losing our chance to finish the trip that I cannot complain about that at all.

The weather is looking good downstream for us and we are looking at a series of 500 mile days if all goes well with the boat, so we anticipate being able to catch up some more miles in the next week. Orange had a very good run in the Pacific Ocean so having something in the bank is going to be useful.

Just a few more hours on this starboard gybe that is taking us south east, and we will be gybing on to port and getting in good winds to push us east for the next five days. So far we have gone south from 39S to 47S and expect to be running along the line of 48S after the gybe.

The seas are quite awkward at present as our course is changing with the shifting wind so that we are heading up into them.. After the gybe the waves will be behind us and the ride is going to smooth out, and the stresses on the boat will diminish.

{It continues...]

It is now 6pm, we have gybed and are heading east now at 20-25 knots, we had some good sunshine during the day but now the clouds have rolled in as the first sign of the depression coming up behind us. We should have great winds of 20-25 knots for the next few days, so some big mileages if all goes well.

During the day we had to drop the main to the deck to repair a broken batten car, in fact the same one we had to repair in the Atlantic. We were a little slicker this time and had it up and down in 45 minutes. Maybe tomorrow we will have a day free from repairs, we can but hope!

All for now - it's time to go and drive!

Brian