Maiden voyage

From Reading and Vilamoura, James Boyd brings news of Tracy Edwards' giant cat

The mixed crew seems to be working fine. "We've got half and half crew and it is such a great mixture. Brian is so good and very patience with everyone," says Darvelid (right). "Everyone is learning a lot".

Emma Richards concurs. "Having the mixed team is brilliant. There is a mutual respect on board. I can't believe how quickly it feels like a big family and I've only spent a week now with them". Interestingly many of the girls on board now have more experience ocean racing on top race boats than some of the boys.

Talking to the crew they are understandably overwhelmed with excitement at sailing what is one of the world's fastest racing boats. "It is an amazing boat. Sailing it is just fantastic," enthused Darvelid. Although PlayStation is just 15ft larger than Maiden II (125ft compared to Maiden II's 110) the Anglicised Swede whose home is now Salcombe, says Maiden II is a completely different boat. "This is very light and easy to handle. Everything is not too heavy. You feel you can physically do things on this boat. PlayStation is a very heavy boat. You feel like you are on a cruise liner and not a Hobie cat. It is amazing the different between them, but speedwise I think they are pretty much the same".

A 110 by 57ft catamaran with a 136ft tall rotating wingmast and 610sqm of upwind sail area, a 350sqm mainsail and a 450sqm genniker is still an enormous boat, but Darvelid says that it is not a problem. "It is hard work, but with 16 people you can definitely handle it. In terms of size, this boat feels not much bigger than Royal & SunAlliance. You can manage it with all the girls doing manoeuvres. It is more similar to Royal & SunAlliance than PlayStation in terms of size, but speed wise these new generation boats are so much quicker. They accelerate much faster".

On the issue of size Emma Richards agrees. "It was really similar to Royal & SunAlliance. Within a couple of hours of being on the boat it feels dinghy-sized. But you step down onto the pontoon and it feels like miles. You don't realise how fast you are going until the dinghies try to come alongside and you see how fast they're having to go to keep up".

And what of Ms Edwards? See page 4