Richard Branson on track to beat the trans-Atlantic record
Billionaire and adventurist Richard Branson left New York yesterday for a sailing trip with his two children. Not an ordinary sailing trip, no. The man best known for building the Virgin empire, has been breaking records sinds the 1980s. The record he wants to break this time is the “Trans Atlantic” record, to sail from New York to Lizard Point off the coast of England.
The crew of his “Virgin Money” 99ft maxi yacht (which started its life as “Speedboat”) consists mainly of members of the TEAMORIGIN America’s Cup team, including a few Olympic medalists. But the most remarkable crew members are Richard’s daughter Holly (26) and son Sam (23). Holly will serve as a medic and said she was fully prepared to face the icebergs and cold waters. Son Sam is very confident and isn’t worried about the risk of navigating the Atlantic in the foul weather: “I think it’s more going to be just very unpleasant,” he said. “The chance of anything going real wrong is not real high. We’re in a great boat with a world class team.”
The current record holder is the spectacular Mari Cha IV, who made the trip in 6 days 17 hours 39 minutes 52 seconds in 2003. She was skippered by Mike Sanderson, who is a also a co-skipper on this attempt. Will he be able to break his own record? “52Sails.org”:http://52sails.org will keep you posted!
UPDATE: They are well on track to beat the record, but face some rough seas. Check out this on board footage:
Jorge neira said
Oct 23, 2008 @ 07:26 PM
Dear Richard You are the best...Very much luck in your " flight" in atlantic ocean Hugs for you and your friends Jorge de ChileRSS feed for comments on this post
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