Round the world match race

Geronimo continues to gain ground on Steve Fossett's Cheyenne

The Jules Verne Trophy is rapidly turning into a round the world match race between Steve Fossett and the crew of his maxi-catamaran Cheyenne and Olivier de Kersauson's Cap Gemini Schneider Electric-sponsored trimaran Geronimo.

Yesterday evening at 20:21GMT de Kersauson's team had sailed their best 24 hour passage to date this trip covering 523 miles at an average of 21.8 knots. They are continously catching Cheyenne, who as Brian Thompson describes below covered 480 miles in the 24 hour period up until 05:10 this morning. Extrapolating Geronimo's position to 0510 this morning indicates that she should have closed within 200 miles of Cheyenne - not a bad effort considering she started out from Ushant (admittedly on a line three miles down the track from Cheyenne) just over 1 day 15 hours after her.

Despite Geronimo's blistering pace she is still some 140 miles behind Orange's record and some 240 miles behind their equivalent position during their Jules Verne attempt in 2003. Geronimo's speed to date was hampered over the course of Wednesday but weak and unstable winds off Madeira. However both G-class maxi-multihulls are now out into the Trades and making hay.

Both boats are presently lining up on the Doldrums which they will encounter over the course of Saturday before crossing the Equator on Sunday.


Brian Thompson reports from on board Cheyenne

All great here we are just passing the Cape Verde Islands as I write this, having had a good days run of 480 miles down the track and 509 through the water. We have had the big gennaker up most of the time although both mornings we have gone to the smaller blast reacher as it has been unusually windy at that time.

We had to do one more piece of work to the blast reacher yesterday, the leech line broke and we had to drop the sail to the deck, fish out the broken piece and attach a new one. After we re-hoisted it Justin [Slattery] had to go up the sheet to the clew of the sail and do the final adjustment. On this sail the clew is about 15m in the air so he had his hands fully hanging on as the boat pitched and yawed in the waves.

I was about to write how few flying fish we had seen. On The Race in 2001 we had hundreds an hour launching themselves at the side of the boat. Then in the space of a minute Nick got hit on the shoulder, one hit me on the back and ricocheted into Mark and then at the same moment another coming cunningly out of the dawn hit Dave full in the face. He was driving at the time and as he needed to look where he was going whilst the rest of us dove for cover behind the parapet, he called for a helmet. Could be flak jackets later...

Brian