Sam Davies reports...

...exclusively for madforsailing from on board Maiden II midway through their Route of Discovery record attempt

Sam and Mikaela von Koskull at said nav station

I am writing this from a warm nav station in the aft section of the starboard hull of the maxi-cat Maiden II. Our multi-national mixed crew are attempting to break the record for the Route of Discovery from Cadiz to San Salvador.

We are nearly one week into the attempt now, and firmly established in the Trade Winds. We are just 60 miles behind Club Med's position on her successful attempt last year. Had it not been for some nasty rain clouds that slowed us last night we would have been ahead. Looking into the weather for the next few days we know that it is going to be touch and go to beat the record, and everyone is working to get every knot of speed out of this giant.

This is just our second trip offshore on our new boat. The first trip was a rough delivery from La Ciotat to Vilamoura. As a crew, we are learning and improving every aspect of the boat handling and steering of Maiden II. We are lucky to have some experienced multihull sailors with us, including Brian Thompson and (just for this trip) Guillermo Altadill who was on board Club Med for The Race. We also have six of us from Royal&SunAlliance and two guys from Team Adventure.

Even so, there is a lot to learn! Having sailed so little, we don't know the ideal sail combination/wind cross-overs - Guillermo has been helping us with that, and also manoeuvres - our gybing has improved drastically!

Early in the trip we had a lot of wind, and the boat and crew took a beating, and we started off wet and tired. We were also suffering from the rough delivery, where we broke a wheel (in a very large wave!) and broke a daggerboard when we hit some debris in the water. We reversed the broken board and put it in the starboard side (as this is the gybe we will spend least time on) and for the same reasons, moved the broken wheel to the port side.

Now, we have had the large gennaker and full main up for 3-4 days and other than a couple of gybes, we have had little to do to. Each watch consists of five people who take turns to steer, do the mainsheet, traveller and gennaker sheet. The next watch is on standby and the third watch sleeps. At the moment, the standby watch is nice and relaxing, only occasionally being called to gybe and just taking care of a few bits of boat maintenance.

I am still in awe of the power of this beast, and at the same time how effortless it can be to 'cruise' along at 25 knots out here, with really only four people required on deck! On the other end of the scale, at the start of this record, Maiden II showed who was really in control, when you are reaching or going upwind in a lot of breeze then a reef or a sail change can require up to all sixteen people on deck to heave the hundreds of kilos of sails around in an environment that could be likened to at the bottom of Niagra Falls.

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