Cheyenne 1.5 Days Ahead of 2002 Record Track of Orange, Geronimo and Orange II Restart

At the position report this morning, Thursday 26 February 2004 – 0510 GMT – Cheyenne was 377 nm West of the Prince Edward Islands (S Africa, Indian Ocean).

Another strong 24 hour run in the ‘inside lane’ between 47 – 48 S of 445 nm (averaging 18.54 kts) has left Cheyenne, Steve FOSSETT and crew usefully ahead of the record track of Orange, placing them about 1.5 days ahead of skipper Bruno PEYRON’S 2002 official Round The World sailing record.

Position Report 26 February 2004 © www.fossettchallenge.com
The above chart details Cheyenne’s distance to Orange’s 2002 position, and measuring the comparison is not always straightforward. Until now we have compared by measuring to a point due South of Cape of Good Hope, where the ideal record track moves well to the South to reduce the sea miles to Cape Leeuwin. Having ‘turned the corner’ now we need to look ahead.

Cheyenne’s current position at 48 12S 29 15W puts them almost 12 degrees to the South and 9 degrees to the East of Orange’s 2002 Day 19 position – a difference of some 800 nm across the water, or +750 nm when comparing the remaining distance along the route to the point where Orange crossed the longitude of Australia’s Cape Leeuwin (at approx 50S, 115E). Effectively, Steve FOSSETT’S team have benefited from consistent daily runs over the past 2 weeks and from having already achieved much of that Southern component.

Report from Brian THOMPSON, Watch Captain – www.brianthompsonsailing.com – on Wednesday 25 February

“We have just passed the longitude of the Cape of Good Hope having travelled from Ushant in just under 18 days, putting us 450 miles ahead of Orange at the same line. We are all very pleased with that considering all the repairs we have done since entering the Southern Ocean. I estimate that we lost 150 miles in the forestay incident, but we were so close to losing our chance to finish the trip that I cannot complain about that at all.

The weather is looking good downstream for us and we are looking at a series of 500-mile days if all goes well with the boat, so we anticipate being able to catch up some more miles in the next week. Orange had a very good run in the Pacific Ocean so having something in the bank is going to be useful.

Just a few more hours on this starboard gybe that is taking us south-east, and we will be gybing on to port and getting in good winds to push us east for the next five days. So far we have gone south from 39S to 47S and expect to be running along the line of 48S after the gybe.

The seas are quite awkward at present as our course is changing with the shifting wind so that we are heading up into them. After the gybe the waves will be behind us and the ride is going to smooth out, and the stresses on the boat will diminish.

It is now 6pm (Wednesday), we have gybed and are heading east now at 20-25 knots, we had some good sunshine during the day but now the clouds have rolled in as the first sign of the depression coming up behind us. We should have great winds of 20-25 knots for the next few days, so some big mileages if all goes well.

During the day we had to drop the main to the deck to repair a broken batten car, in fact the same one we had to repair in the Atlantic. We were a little slicker this time and had it up and down in 45 minutes. Maybe tomorrow we will have a day free from repairs, we can but hope!”