Ian Thomson Circumnavigation - Day 8 and back up to speed

by Ian Thomson on 13 May 2010 It is day eight into Ian Thomson's solo sailing world record attempt. The yacht Save Our Seas Ocean Racing departed Airlie Beach on the fifth of May at 10:30:20 in an effort to break the WSSRC record for sailing non-stop solo around Australia.

Ian's mission is about raising awareness of what the damage plastic bags do to our environment. He aims is to raise an understanding in everyday Australian to think before they use plastic bags, to reduce the usage if they can; and if they can't, to reuse and eventually recycle them.

SOS Ocean Racing is back up to speed after a slow night off the northern tip of Melville Island in the Northern Territory. With the wind backing off to as little as 5 knots, the overall speed for the day dropped. However the record attempt is way ahead of pace on the old record and it was easily afforded and skipper Ian Thomson used the time to complete some maintenance issues that were hounding him.

With seven days down and 1,455nm into the record, Ian is already over 700nm in front of the record pace for the 6,545nm course.

Ian commented this morning on rounding Melville Island at 0950, 'I may be off to a flyer but most record attempts do as they choose the weather to depart in. The trick is to get down the west coast and across the bottom in one piece, something that is not going to be as easy as I thought.' Ian was referring to some issues he had with his auto-pilot however last night Ian spent half an hour hove to fixing things and hopefully they are all good.

This morning Ian woke up to a beautiful sunrise and a call from ABC Darwin asking him about the record attempt and the cause.

Ian took great pride in telling them about the world record for sailing non stop solo around Australia and why we need to get rid of plastic bags. He also explained how he wants to campaign the government on changing legislation to at least get rid of non-degradable bags.

A survey on the SOS Ocean Racing website (www.sosoceanracing.com) home page lets you have your say and statistics will be used to campaign local state and federal governments.

This morning is sailing along at eight knots again in 13 knots of wind and is now headed to Western Australia. He has 5,110nm to go to finish in hopefully the first week or two of June. You can track Ian's progress at www.sosoceanracing.com