With less than 600 miles to go, Ericsson 4 will likely be first at the finishing line in Cape Town, South-Africa. We’ll have a more detailed review of the first leg next week, when all ships are in.
In the meantime, we’ve selected this picture to be our “52Sails picture of the week”. Freddie Shanks has to do some tough grinding onboard of Green Dragon. Image (c) Guo Chuan/Green Dragon Racing/Volvo Ocean Race.
Virgin Money had to abandon her attempt to break the Atlantic sailing record. The ex-speedboat maxi faced huge waved, sailed trough storms but had to declare defeat when a huge monster wave shred the Spinnaker, washed a ten man life boat overboard and ripped a huge gash in the mainsail.
However, the team is very confident they’ll be back. “Virgin Money will soon be fighting fit and ready to take on the Atlantic again in the very near future”, sir Richard Branson declared. “You learn to respect the awesome power of this ocean and to admit when she has you beat. But I truly believe that next time Virgin Money will set a new world record that will secure its place in the record books for many years to come.”
His two children (Holly and Sam) have announced they want to be there on the next attempt as well!
Billionaire and adventurist Richard Branson left New York yesterday for a sailing trip with his two children. Not an ordinary sailing trip, no. The man best known for building the Virgin empire, has been breaking records sinds the 1980s. The record he wants to break this time is the “Trans Atlantic” record, to sail from New York to Lizard Point off the coast of England.
The crew of his “Virgin Money” 99ft maxi yacht (which started its life as “Speedboat”) consists mainly of members of the TEAMORIGIN America’s Cup team, including a few Olympic medalists. But the most remarkable crew members are Richard’s daughter Holly (26) and son Sam (23). Holly will serve as a medic and said she was fully prepared to face the icebergs and cold waters. Son Sam is very confident and isn’t worried about the risk of navigating the Atlantic in the foul weather: “I think it’s more going to be just very unpleasant,” he said. “The chance of anything going real wrong is not real high. We’re in a great boat with a world class team.”
The current record holder is the spectacular Mari Cha IV, who made the trip in 6 days 17 hours 39 minutes 52 seconds in 2003. She was skippered by Mike Sanderson, who is a also a co-skipper on this attempt. Will he be able to break his own record? “52Sails.org”:http://52sails.org will keep you posted!
UPDATE: They are well on track to beat the record, but face some rough seas. Check out this on board footage: