Sunday, January 20, 2008

Amazing!

When Ellen MacArthur beat Francis Joyon's solo round the world sailing record three years ago it was deemed almost miraculous! All the way round in just 71 days!!

Francis however has just won his record back and smashed Ellen's by 14 days!!!! In total he took 57 days 13 hours 34 minutes 6 seconds!! (There is a very cool animation comparing their journies here).

In 1969 Robin Knox Johnston completed the first solo not stop voyage and it took him 313 days!!

Francis (if my sums are right) averaged almost 16 knots for the whole journey in his awesome 97 foot multihull. 16 knots is as fast as we ever sailed when we raced round Britain a couple of years ago!!

The man is amazing. And well done IDEC for sponsoring this and making it happen.

5 comments:

Florent said...

Hi,

IDEC's average speed is actually 19.09 knots ! Wow !

Ken Douglas said...

19.09 knots!!!!!

Now that is an amazing average speed.

I've been following the Barcelona round the world race and in todays logs one of the boats was talking about sailing at over 30 knots!!! But just for a few minutes!

I think the world speed record is around the mid 40's

I know the guys leading the Speed Rocket team that are aiming to be the first to pass 50 knots

This is a link to them doing 38knots in just 17 knots of wind!!

Ken Douglas said...

OK - Here is the link to the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AapePEpER2M

Jeremy said...

reminds me of sunsail regatta holidays in the med.... hadn't seen the speed rocket clip, I think they'd lose more than the rig broaching at that pace!

1paradisian said...

thanks KEN for your korero at the graduation tumeke, the way how you done explained the past, present an future of what was happening at the time was inspiration at its best, kia kaha kia maia , nga manaki kia koe