Diary of a world record

Friday 25th May
At 6.30GMT, the last moment we could be in Horta to break the Cable and Wireless record, we're still 390 miles away, wallowing around at a dismal 6 knots. We've had squalls through the night, and although the head sea has gradually turned around to beam and then to following, our progress remains the same.

        As first light dawns, Jan takes over from the autopilot. "Time to crack on," he says. At 6 knots we'd been burning 10 litres of fuel an hour. Now we're burning 22 to 25 at 16 knots, so we've increased our speed with no penalty on fuel consumption.

        It's seat of the pants driving, choosing a cloud on the horizon that's roughly on the right heading, then steering around the larger waves, and over the smaller ones. "When the boat's on autopilot, you get the bow lifting up and the prop cavitating when you hit the top of a big wave," he explains. "Steering around them means you can maintain the attitude of the boat much better."

        The plan now is to get to Horta and lay over for a day to get ready to cross straight back to Cardiff via Lizard Point. The boat absolutely stinks, probably as a result of four smelly blokes, but also the fact that the front cabin has been shipping water. Everything up there is saturated.

[ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 ]