Phaedo³ Co-skipper Brian Thompson (pictured below) is not only a world record holding speed demon and bona fide MOD70 Jedi Master, he’s also a genuine good guy who seems to have found another calling…writing lyrical, mid-race reports about what it’s like to log over 690 miles in 24 hours!
They just bagged line honors in the RORC Transatlantic Race in Grenada, but if you really want to know what it’s like to sail 690 mils in 24 hours….read Brian’s report below.
“Sitting here on the beach in Grenada, sipping an iced “Ting” this lunchtime, it is very hard to imagine that less than 6 days ago we were leaving from Lanzarote in the Canary islands – 3000 miles directly upwind of here. So by my maths, we travelled more than 500 miles a day, not including all the zigging and zagging to get downwind…So 500 miles a day point to point, and on one day we had less than 10 knots of breeze the entire time – so that meant plenty of high speed blasting on other days to get that average up. Our 678 mile day certainly helped.
“It is a truly amazing route.. As Paul Allen, who sailed with us, and has done many California and Hawaii races, has said, this was the best race course he has ever sailed on.. With days of the most perfect sailing conditions in the world, who can argue, probably not even Columbus, the first to make this trip. And the fact that this second itineration of the RORC Transatlantic race will happen every year, and with so many boats wanting to cross the Atlantic in a more sporting way – I can only see the event getting bigger, rather like the Caribbean 600 which has organically grown from small beginnings.
“But for me, the icing on my 6 day cake was the match race we had with Concise10. Its been fun, intense, stressful and a learning experience to race in such close quarters for so long..Yes, we may not have been in visual contact much of the time, but we were never more than 2 hours apart, so in very similar conditions, and at every sched we were pushing each other to be 1 knot, .5 knot or.2 knot faster or 1 or 2 degrees lower. One design racing at 30 knots hour after hour, and as the boats are so well made, I am not concerned about the boat not taking the punishment, its more – can we take the punishment the boat can meet out a high speeds.”
