Less Than 3000 Miles to the Finish Line

After another long night of squalls through the Doldrums, Steve FOSSETT and crew saw the end of a day which began with the crossing of the Equator in record time and finished this morning with a hard-fought 269 mile run (avg 11.2 kts).

That’s a net distance back to the start-finish line of less than 3000 miles. Current lead over the 2002 RTW record of Orange I is still calculated at 3 days. ”

(“Although Cheyenne’s estimated lead is still 3 days, in mileage terms we have now reduced the estimate to 1125 miles, as the widely differing courses of the two boats make direct comparisons unreliable. So we are now simply measuring each boat’s distance to the finish and using the difference as any lead / deficit.)

Cheyenne’s times of 50 days 3 hours 3 minutes from the Ouessant start to the second Equator crossing (3 days 1 hour faster than Orange 2002), as well as the 10 days 6 hours 47 minutes passage from Cape Horn back to the Equator (7 hours faster than Club Med during The Race 2001) are both new segment bests for an RTW attempt.

Steve Fossett commented last night when told of the Horn – Equator mark: “We were shocked to hear that we set a segment record from Cape Horn to Equator. We thought we were unlucky with the weather because we were brought down to minimal speeds five times by lack of wind. Perhaps the South Atlantic is always difficult and all of the other fast boats have had comparable problems.”