"Orange II"
kipper Bruno Peyron crossed the starting line near Marseille this morning at 8:30 am with his 120-foot-long mega-cat "Orange II" and now wants to break the Mediterranean record from Marseille to Carthage / Tunisia by Steve Fossett and his "Playstation".
The 10-man crew around Bruno Peyron started in winds between 25 and 30 knots from the west-northwest. The trip will probably be quite rough, writes Peyron on his homepage, especially on the southern tip of Sardinia. The current record for Steve Fossett and his 125-foot Kat "Playstation", set in May 2002, is 18 hours, 46 minutes and 48 seconds.
"Orange II" must have crossed the finish line in front of Tunisia by 3 am and 17 minutes tomorrow morning to wrest the record from Fossett. In his last attempt to relieve Fossett by a record, Peyron narrowly failed a few weeks ago and only managed the second-fastest ever sailed Atlantic crossing. However, he had taken a little detour in this attempt in order to break the 24-hour record, which he succeeded with 704 nautical miles.