The 50 knot crossing

Mike Sanderson looks forward to a stormy transatlantic record attempt on Virgin Money

The former Speedboat , now known as Virgin Money and complete with a crew line-up including Richard Branson and children Holly and Sam, looks set to head off today on her attempt on the outright monohull west to east transatlantic record between New York and the Lizard.

However far from the perfect weather scenario - where the boat would blast across the North Atlantic in big following winds and flat water (ie ahead of a depression and behind high pressure), the record attempt looks set to be very much more blustery with a huge amount of wind in the Atlantic for the duration of the passage.

“It is going to be a pretty wet and wild trip,” skipper Mike Sanderson told us last night shortly after landing in the Big Apple. “The forecast says we are going to see some pretty big breeze and some pretty big waves at some quite tight angles. But it is getting a bit later in the season, a bit more wintery, so I guess that’s what we’re in for.”

As Sanderson told us in our previous interview with him - finding the right weather to leave on on this route can be tricky as depressions tend to form over the Great Lakes and head east across Newfoundland. Thus it can be hard to find suitable weather to get from New York to these systems. However over the course of yesterday a suitable meteorological stepping stone was forming over the Great Lakes and it is on the strong westerlies on the south of this depression that Sanderson and his ex- ABN AMRO One navigator Stan Honey hope will pop them out into the Atlantic at a rate of knots… Given that the forecast shows this depression to already be out into the Atlantic, we can expect Virgin Money to set off at the earliest possible opportunity today.

“The weather is pretty complicated. We are going to go out in some pretty strong southwesterlies - 15-25 knots," continues Sanderson. "Then quite quickly it is going to go in to the NW and then the north which will be a little chilly. So we are going to have to blast pretty much straight across - we are going to have to go east at pace. Then as it starts going back to the NW we’ll try and get some northing in and get back up to the great circle. We could deal with some pretty big breeze, maybe even 50 knots on the first night. So there is going to be no shortage of excitement.”

The forecast chart for 0900 UTC tomorrow shows the depression centred southeast of Nova Scotia and in between it and the mainland are 50 knots NNEerly headwinds. Remember there is the northeasterly flowing Gulf Stream in action here too just to make for some truly heinous storm force wind against current conditions. Nice.

Fortunately, as Sanderson says, they will try to be on the opposite side of this system and as it is relatively slow moving, to start with at least, they should hopefully be able to stay on its south and eastern sides where there will be favourable winds. But this will involve a large loop away from the great circle which they probably won’t converge with until they are way past Newfoundland.

In fact looking at the weather the low behaves itself until about three days out when it rapidly heads off to the northeast, displacing the Azores high in the process, leaving some powerful 50 knot southerlies over the great circle. By day four a lobe of the depression that has developed over the previous day has broken off to form a ENE-WSW orientated trough off to the southwest of Ireland and if they can get to the south of this they will find favourable 30 knot southwesterlies that to propel them all the way towards Blighty.

“We are going to change over a couple of systems, but today the breeze is looking pretty good across,” states Sanderson, who says that the present routing is indicating a five day something crossing. However he is aware that with the forecast there will definitely be times when they have to throttle back in a major way. “Hopefully there should be enough fat in it so we can nurse the boat through the big stuff.”

A time of 5 days something will be faster than Jet Services V’s 1990 record, but slower than the 4 days 17 hours record set by Branson’s old mate, the late Steve Fossett on board PlayStation in 2001. But the time they are looking to beat is 6 days 17 hours 52 minutes and 39 seconds, held by the present fastest crewed monohull across the Atlantic, Mari Cha IV (which Sanderson also skippered).

For the voyage Sanderson has managed to round up his largely TeamOrigin squad with the exception of Neal McDonald and Justin Slattery who are busy leading the Volvo Ocean Race on board Green Dragon.

So do the Bransons really know what they are letting themselves in for? “Yes. They are incredibly resilient to my discussions on what it going to be like,” says Sanderson.

We sincerely hope they have stolen some sick bags from one of their 747s.

See the weather maps on page 2...