Sailing Magazine
By Nick Leggatt
The last few sailing record features I have shared have been well received, so here’s another. This time it’s about another ‘Playstation’ record, and is written by Nick Leggatt who always pens a fascinating feature as he captures all the special moments so well.
Leggatt sets the tone from the very first line:
“Trim on staysail!”
Click . . . click . . . click – the clutches for the two starboard coffee grinders were engaged along with the headsail winch, and the four winch operators set to work powering up the huge sail.
“16h38. We’re over the start line now. Boat speed 18 knots. Keep high on the course, there are shallow sandbanks to port and to starboard.”
Steve Fossett’s Round Britain and Ireland record, set in 1994 aboard his trimaran ‘Lakota’, had been broken six weeks earlier by the 110ft catamaran ‘Maiden’. Now it was our turn to try and regain the record aboard his 125ft cat ‘Playstation’.
Breaking records is never easy as it takes constant trimming by the crew to maintain speed to its maximum, and tons of concentration too.
One person was always designated to hold on to the main traveller and one to hold the headsail sheet. Traveller and sheet were never cleated at sea as the danger of capsizing at 28 knots was constant. As the wind increased one of the crew would keep his hand on the dump valve for the mainsheet hydraulics, though if the hull started to fly we would first blow off the traveller, dropping it as much as 20′ and then spending the next 10 minutes winding it back on!
At last, in pouring rain, at 08h47, we crossed the finish line off Ramsgate, completing the 1787-mile course in 4 days 16 hours 9 minutes and 36 seconds for an average speed of 15.93 knots, and breaking the record by approximately 55 minutes.
This is another wonderful read written by Nick Leggatt.
READ IT ALL HERE: Pages from 2002 12 – SAILING Magazine – OCR
