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 | |  Wednesday, 27 March, 2002, 18:20 GMT Edwards eyes records  Edwards (c) has assembled her crew from 1998 Tracy Edwards believes her Maiden II crew could shatter not only the Jules Verne round-the-world record but beat Grant Dalton's mark of 62 days to lap the planet. Dalton set the mark in The Race - also a sprint around the globe but not eligible for the Jules Verne record because it begins in Barcelona and finishes in Marseille. The route for an official attempt on the round-the-world record is eastabout from a start-finish line between England's Lizard Point and Ushant in France, leaving all the Capes to the left. British yachtswoman Edwards is preparing for a second attempt at the Jules Verne trophy next winter after her 1998 all-female bid ended in disaster. Edwards and her crew on Royal and Sun Alliance were dismasted in the Southern Ocean while trying to better Frenchman Olivier de Kersauson's time of 71 days 14 hours set in 1997. Four years later - and having acquired Dalton's 110-foot catamaran Club Med - Edwards believes the New Zealander's mark is also under threat.
"Grant always said when we discussed buying his boat that he could have gone faster if he had the right sail budget and right sail development," Edwards told BBC Sport Online. "Sail technology has moved on in leaps and bounds even in the year since they did The Race and we believe a good sail development plan could put some extra knots on the boat."
During Edwards' last ill-fated attempt, the crew were ahead of schedule after breaking a host of records. But 43 days into the race, the mast was broken by 40-foot waves and 55mph winds in the Southern Ocean between New Zealand and Cape Horn, 2,000 miles from land. Royal and Sun Alliance took 16 days to limp to Chile under jury rig but Edwards knew they would be back. "It's unfinished business," she said. "We had plans to do it again quite quickly but we had to wait because we couldn't buy the boat we wanted. "The girls all had different projects, while I had my daughter, wrote a book and set up a motivational company. "But when Club Med came on the market last summer it was the chance to go for it again which we had always intended to do." Maiden II will go on standby for an appropriate weather window between November and March.
In the meantime five more crew will be added to the existing 11 from the 1998 attempt. Edwards skippered the first all-female crew on Maiden in the 1989-90 Whitbread round-the-world race. But she insists that once this Jules Verne attempt is over she will be finished with championing the women-only cause. "We were the first all-girl crew to go round with stops and we will be the first to go round without stops and that's a nice end to the chapter." | |
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