JV Jumble–Sub-60?: It’ll probably jinx them to mention this, and cause the mast to fall down or the rudders to fall off, but here I go…If Cheyenne puts up decent average speeds for the next week, she has a very good chance of becoming the first sailboat to sail all the way around the globe in under 60 days. Here’s the math: Cheyenne has 7 days to sail about 2500 miles. That means Fossett and his team have to squeeze just 350 miles a day out of their battered boat, which is an average of less than 15 knots (click here for all the numbers). They routinely cruise at 18-20 in decent wind (and just sailed 430 miles in the last 24 hours), so this all comes down to the weather, and (“thank-you Neptune”) the weather is cooperating big-time. As it happens, there is a handy-dandy little low pressure cell developing in just the right place to send them screaming downwind for the finish. The hard part will be judging how much stress the boat is under and avoiding a catastrophic breakdown. Can you imagine how Fossett and his crew would feel after almost two months at sea to drop their rig when the record is almost a certainty? I don’t think anyone will sleep much in the coming week. They’ll be spending all their time examining and monitoring every little critical terminal fitting, and trying to avoid running over any floating containers or other junk in the sea. If they survive and nail 60 days it will be an incredible achievement (particularly given all the breakdowns), the equivalent of the 4-minute mile, and probably very close to the limit of what this current generation of maxi-multihulls can do. For comparison, the first non-stop voyage around the globe, in 1968, took 313 days. The first sub-80 day circumnavigation was achieved ten years ago. Fifty-five days might just be possible with perfect weather and a newer generation of maxi-cat, like Bruno Peyron’s latest Orange. I think sub-50 is impossible in anything we currently recognize as a sailboat. Stay tuned. This is going to get tense…



“Hey, Steve. I found this little bugger nibbling at our rudder stock. Funny, he only speaks French….”

(Photo: Nick Leggatt)