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Outside Magazine July 2003

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Record Collector (Cont.)

FOSSETT ARRIVES at the boat 12 hours before our expected midnight departure. For a man who's all about speed and endurance, he is distinctly non-streamlined, with a moon-shaped face and a pronounced paunch set over thick, powerful legs. In his pre-sail briefing for the 12-person crew, he is diffident and almost awkward, but firm about what it will take to succeed. "We need maximum-efficiency downwind driving, and we need to avoid boat-handling mistakes that will cost us time," he says, stressing that he doesn't want to see the windward hull lifted high out of the water. "We are not allowed to flip this boat. If we do, people will be killed." Anyone lucky enough to be safe inside the upturned hull, he continues, should grab a knife, find the escape hatch, and start hacking at the trampoline between the hulls to free any crew members drowning underneath.

Steve Fossett is on a nonstop bender. If there were a world record for setting world records, he would probably hold that, too.

The other possible death sentence—man overboard—is discussed next. Dave Scully, the 47-year-old who manages PlayStation, understands the unfavorable math involving a catamaran that sails a mile every two minutes. "The first rule about man overboard," he says, "is 'Don't fall overboard.' " By the time the crew could turn the boat around, anyone in the water would be miles behind, a small head on an endless sea. Fossett, who likes to stick a number on everything, believes the odds of retrieval are about 50 percent.

Scully, an American who spends most of his time at sea, is a world-class sailor who raced solo around the globe in the 1994-95 BOC Challenge. Fossett turned to him for sailing advice more than ten years ago, and the two have campaigned together ever since. A few other Play-Station vets are on hand: designer Pete Melvin, 41, a former Olympic sailor; Peter Hogg, 59, a wry New Zealander who's lived in the States since the sixties and who can be relied upon to produce porridge or tea in hurricane conditions; and Brian Thompson, 41, a laid-back and highly skilled English multihuller who has sailed with Fossett since helping him and Scully set a record for circumnavigating Ireland, in 1993. The rest of the crew is composed of mostly English professional sailors, one South African, and Miki, a feisty Finn, the sole woman on board. These sailors race boats all over the world in exchange for airfare, expenses, and whatever per diem they can squeeze out of sponsors and wealthy owners.

To avoid light winds, our strategy will be to sail a longer, more southerly route than Club Med's. "Let's go main!" Fossett calls as PlayStation motors across smooth water just off the marina, under the warm glow of a near-full moon. Twenty minutes later, someone grunts, "She's home," and five of us drop off the winch handles, gulping air as the head of the massive sail is locked into the mast, 140 feet above. We unfurl the headsail and streak across the World Sailing Speed Record Council's start line 42 seconds after the stroke of midnight. Fossett is planted happily at the helm of his superboat, gunning for another triumph over time and distance.

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