Maiden voyage

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

The reason for moving the boat to Vilamoura was to be close to Cadiz, from where tomorrow they are expecting to set off westwards across the Atlantic on the Route of Discovery record to San Salvador in the Bahamas. The record for this 3,884 mile passage currently stands at 10 days 14 hours 53 minutes and 44 seconds at an average speed of 15.77 knots.

Maiden II in her previous incarnation currently holds the record for this passage. Dalton set this record when Club Med was still relatively fresh out of the box and in the process went off course in order to set a new 24 hour record run. So provided the boat holds together it should not be too tall an order for Maiden II to beat it. But if they do break it, they may not hold it for long as the Route of Discovery is on Steve Fossett's shopping list for May, after he has demolished the Transmed record from Marseilles to Carthage.

With a crew of 16 for the record attempt they will run a three watch system, with four hour long watches led by Darvelid, von Koskull and Thompson, with Adrienne Cahalan out of the watch system. "That way you've always got 10 people on deck if you want to do sail changes or take a reef," says Darvelid.

Meanwhile from Maiden II HQ in Berkshire Tracy Edwards has her power suit on and is tackling corporate Britain. After her previous experience raising money for Maiden and Royal & SunAlliance she says she is shocked and overjoyed by the positive response the campaign is getting. Whether this is due to her higher profile or the effect of a corporate world more responsive to sailing sponsorship after Ellen MacArthur's incredible Vendee Globe or a mixture of both is hard to judge. "The announcement was fantastic. We had loads of enquires through that. We're talking with four potential title sponsors, all quite far down the road and I guess we've got offers from about 20 companies for part sponsorship," Edwards told madforsailing.

Edwards says she is resisting the temptation to take offers of sponsorship smaller than she is looking for. "I want to get it right, so the sponsor walks away saying "that was absolutely brilliant", so the whole thing works. Fortunately we do have time to do that."

"This project feels really different to any project I've done. It is a real breath of fresh air," she adds.