PlayStation Round Britain attempt

Steve Fossett discusses his round Britain attempt with The Daily Sail

After an extraordinary summer that has seen him become the first person ever to take a balloon around the world singlehanded, Steve Fossett is back on the ocean wave, once again in the world's biggest racing catamaran - PlayStation.

While he has been off enjoying his other hobbies, Fossett has watched as several of his records have fallen - all of them to Tracy Edwards' Maiden II sailed by his old crew Brian Thompson and Helena Darvelid.

"It was a frustating summer for me," admitted Fossett. "As of May when we broke the Marseilles-Carthage record, we held the six fastest outright passage records. And now Maiden has encroached up that! They've taken one of those records - Cowes-St Malo and there's Round Britain and Ireland and also the 24 hour. So while I've been tied up with my balloons and my gliders, I've lost considerable ground in terms of maintaining longevity in sailing records."

At the time of our conversation Fossett was on board PlayStation beating up the Channel from Plymouth, where the giant 125ft maxi-cat has been moored for the last few days since being delivered from Cadiz, to Ramsgate the point where Fossett was hoping to start at midday today, but felt it more likely to be mid-afternoon.

"We're feeling really good about this one. It is a classic wind pattern where the low pressure system coming up from the southwest and goes straight over England but of course it will be a lot of wind and that will be enough to keep us nervous!"

At the start of the attempt - like Maiden 2 and Geronimo they will be heading anti-clockwise around the British Isles - Fossett was expecting it to be reasonably light - around 15-20 knots, but this was going to be build steady as the humungous low pressure system that has been battering the Around Alone fleet moved north.

"The idea is that as the low is approaching we'll head north and then we'll get the windshift as we get up towards the Shetlands Islands and then come back down the other side of the low pressure. If we do all that fast enough, we'll round the corner of Ireland and be heading back in before the wind goes away." Fossett doesn't want to repeat the recent attempt by Bruno Peyron on board Orange, who saw the record slip through his fingers while he was becalmed within site of the finish line. "We've got a time deadline - if things get worse and we'll run out of wind back in the Channel, but right now things are looking good."

The trip will unquestionably be a hairy one. "We'll have extended periods of 40 knots. When we get up north in the vicinity of the Orkney Islands the wind will pick up to gale force and will stay that way all the way round the Shetlands and back to Ireland. What we're trying to do is avoid sailing very much upwind. We might be slightly upwind in order to reach the Shetlands, so that's going to be tough in 35 knots of wind. They're forecasting sleet at the same time! I don't know if the guys will ever sail with me again once we've through all that." This will be the most wind PlayStation has seen with the exception of when they nearly pitchpoled in a 64 knot gust coming across the Atlantic.

An interesting point is that the Round Britain record is still a relatively slow one. "We've don't have to be extraordinarily fast. It's not like the transatlantic where we did average 25.78 knots. This one we only have to average 15.8 knots to average the record. So we can afford some slow sailing in big conditions and we'll do okay if we can maintain wind all the way."

PlayStation has been on standby for the last 20 days after Fossett decided that instead of attempting the Route of Discovery record from Cadiz to Salvador in the Bahamas, they would try and regain the Round Britain Record. "We set this record in October 1994 on Lakota with just a crew of five. We didn't have much enthusiasm for breaking our own record, but now that it's been broken, we are very motivated to try and get it back," Fossett told The Daily Sail.

When Fossett's first multihull - the 60ft trimaran Lakota - made the attempt they didn't have ideal conditions. "We had a very good run up the North Sea and then we ran out of wind on the return south after the Shetlands for half a day. But it was a good pattern, but it wasn't the classic slow moving low centred over the British Isles."

Sailing with Fossett are the many of the usual suspects including Dave Scully, who runs the boat in Fossett's absense. However for this attempt is taking his Belgium ballooning meteorologist Luc Trullemans. "He's the top ballooning meteorologist - he did my balloon flights, as well as other great balloon flights. He has provided us with some help on some of our previous records, such as the Falmouth, Cowes-St Malo and Plymouth-La Rochelle. I think it is quite logical that a meteorolgoist should be ballooning and sailing - just like Bob Rice does."

The time to beat is 4 days and 17 hours and 23 minutes. "Four days is feasible - but it's a tall order and you have to make round without anything going wrong. And you have to sail fast all the way. But it would be an important achievement. Each of the other giant multihulls have attempted this. So I think if we can get the record, In effect it is a competition with the other boats in the world."