Fossett Challenges - Cheyenne 1200 Miles Ahead Of Record Pace - With Daunting Final Leg Ahead

Wednesday 17 March 2004 - 1710 GMT - 42 miles West of Cape Horn: With consistent northwesterly winds powering them 242 nm in the past 12 hours (avg 20.2 kts) along the Round The World Sailing record course, Cape Horn is now literally in sight for Steve Fossett and Cheyenne's crew. A brief, but rather more cheerful, Steve Fossett wrote this afternoon after the myriad of weather and equipment trials of the past 5 days:

"We are now in the good winds to the Horn. ETA is 20z to 21z at 1 to 10 nm off the Lighthouse. We will not break any of the records between the capes, but we are the fastest ever from the start to Cape Horn on a RTW attempt. If we could just stop having breakages we would have a very good chance at this record. A beautiful day for sailing."
With their lead over the track of 2002 Round The World record setter Orange now at 1200 miles - or 3 days - the coming challenges are still substantial, with their next course elements affected by High pressure systems coming off the Argentine coast. Good sailing winds from the N/NW will now probably take them East of the Falkland Islands before they can turn North.

Fossett and his team now have approximately 7500 miles to go to reach their official RTW starting point at the French island of Ouessant, where their target is still the RTW record of 64 days, 8 hours, 37 mins, 24 seconds.

For further details and regular position updates, please see: www.fossettchallenge.com