Transatlantic expressway

With two events and a record attempt the North Atlantic will be a busy place for the next two weeks

The north Atlantic is set to become a busy place over the next fortnight.

Firstly there is the Rolex Transatlantic Challenge. Robert Miller's 140ft schooner Mari-Cha IV has until around 20:00 on the night of Friday, 3 June to break Atlantic's race record to the Lizard, but in reality is rightly expected to demolish this despite the poor forecast. She should pass the Lizard sometime early next week. Behind her the 17 remaining slower boats in the fleet (plus today's retirement, the 250ft clipper ship Stad Amsterdam who is still heading for Cowes) will be streaming into the Western Approaches and up to Cowes over the course of the two weeks following this.

Hot on their heels will be Frenchman Francis Joyon who tomorrow is due to set out from New York on an attempt on the singlehanded west to east transatlantic record on board his 90ft trimaran IDEC. Despite giving the Rolex Transatlantic Challenge a four day head start Joyon, alone on board let's not forget, will enjoy being able to pick off at least half the fleet before he too passes the Lizard. If he leaves tomorrow at 1800GMT, as planned, he has until next Thursday, 2 June at 20:34GMT to break Laurent Bourgnon's 11 year old record.

Alarmingly, coming in the opposite direction will be another group of singlehanded sailors aboard a fine collection of 36 Open 50s, Open 40s and multihulls competing in the Faraday Mill OSTAR. This event sets sail from Plymouth bound for Newport, Rhode Island this coming Sunday, 29 May, which should nicely line them up to meet the entire Rolex Transatlantic Challenge fleet and not to mention one fast moving red trimaran coming in the opposite direction. Trimaran versus trimaran - even singlehanded this could represent a closing speed of around 50 knots.

Thankfully the north Atlantic is a large piece of ocean but we hope that all the boats coming in either direction have a good working collection of radars, radar reflectors and radar detectors and are not plugging Cape Race, Newfoundland and Land's End in as waypoints. Even prior to the start of the Rolex Transatlantic Challenge authorities were warning that due to the lack of ice coming down the Labrador Current a lot of shipping had been reverting to the great circle between these two points.

Shudder.