Three days to Gibraltar

Tony Bullimore's maxi-cat en route to Oryx Quest start

Tony Bullimore and his crew on the maxi catamaran Team Daedalus, have covered the first 1,400 miles of their delivery trip from Bristol UK to Doha, Qatar, in a little over three days. Bullimore reached Gibraltar, their first stopover point, late last night, having covered the first 980 miles in 48 hours en route to Doha and the start of Tracy Edwards Oryx Quest 2005 around the world race on 6 February.

"This is the best trip I have ever had from Bristol," Bullimore enthused this morning. "At times we were surfing at 30 knots. The winds were north easterly all the way down and gave us a fantastic run. We were only in delivery mode, so didn't push the boat too hard, but in hindsight, it would have been very easy to have reeled off 1,000+ miles during those first two days."

All this bodes well for Bullimore's entry in Oryx Quest 2005 race. "The big cat is so much faster now that we have shed so much weight during the refit in Bristol, and she will be even faster once we take the main engines out of the boat when we reach Qatar" Bullimore predicted.

The first stage of this 4,000 delivery trip to Doha via the Suez Canal has been so fast that Tony has decided to let his crew celebrate Christmas in Gibraltar and to set out for Port Said early on Boxing Day. The crew is expected to reach the Qatar Capital early in January.

Team Daedalus will be one of four crews chasing a $1million prize in this first ever global yacht race to start and finish in the Arabian Gulf. The 23,000 mile event takes the fleet down the Indian Ocean into the Southern Ocean and around the five great capes of Australia, New Zealand, South America and South Africa before returning to the oil state of Qatar at the end of April, in what will undoubtedly be a new world record time for any circumnavigation.

Current entries for the Oryx Quest 2005 include Tony Bullimore’s Daedalus, Brian Thompson’s Qatar 2006, and Olivier de Kersauson’s Geronimo. A fourth entry will be announced shortly.