ICAP Leopard 3 Transatlantic Record - A great night's sail

by ICAP Leopard 3 team on 4 Jun 2010 ICAP Leopard, the 100ft super-maxi racing yacht owned by Mike Slade, on May 29th crossed the start line at Ambrose Light to begin her attempt on the 2,925 nautical mile monohull transatlantic speed record. ICAP Leopard will need to cross the finish line at Lizard Point before 12h 37m UTC on Saturday 5th June to break the current record held by Mari Cha IV of 6 days, 17 hours and 52 minutes.

The latest update:

Day 6 - Thursday 03 June.

Sitting here in the nav area looking at the GPS and our plotter. The GPS says we are doing speed over the ground at 20 knots – fantastic! It has been a great nights sail with our largest A-2 spinnaker flying, only one problem we are heading towards Lisbon! In layman's terms, a yacht cannot sail directly into or 180 degrees directly away from the wind, we always need to sail at an angle to the wind hence heading for Lisbon and not the UK.

The low pressure system we have been trying to ride has been very uncharacteristic the whole way across the Atlantic since the Grand Banks and yet again yesterday holding us up with lighter than expected winds for the third time this Attempt – I cant tell you how frustrating this is sitting and watching the clock countdown without going fast….anything under 20 knots of boat speed seems like we are standing still. The weather gods are not happy with Mr Leopard for some reason as we had the same problem for our last event, the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, which was a light air event yet again! Anyway we are looking for the shift to get back onto port and hopefully more wind to sail on course for Lands End at pace.

Later
Chris

http://www.leopard3.com/