Today the American maxi cat Cheyenne will reach Cape Horn. Whether their voyage will end in a record isn’t known. What is known is that the Cheyenne crew is one of the best teams of sea going DIYers ever. After fixing their forestay while at sea and underway they recently completed repair of their mast track while 100+ feet in the air. Full kudos to David Scully, Justin Slattery, Damian Foxall and Mike Beasley for this acrobatic technical feat. Here’s a sampling of David Scully’s repair report, “We had brought the battery drill, drill bits, “Easy outs” and vice grips, and, invoking a separate saint for every sheared bolt, succeeded in backing all 8 out of the rig before the drill bit broke. And that was the first step. ” Thanks be to easy outs, vise grips and more.

Still and all this contest is all about speed. While Cheyenne made repairs she was slowed and got on the wrong side of a low pressure. Due to this she has had 3 days under 400 miles.

The sum of this is that Cheyenne will round Cape Horn about 2 days ahead of the current record. The cat has certainly used up some of the proverbial 9 lives and will need a full potential performance up the Atlantic to stay ahead.

The French trimaran Geronimo is on her 21st day at sea sailing the Indian Ocean. At the Cape of Good Hope, Geronimo was 1 hour ahead of Cheyenne’s time. Recently, Ice, fog and speed for Geronimo .

Looking at both boats through 20 days, Cheyenne had better mileage on 11 days, Geronimo on 9. Overall Cheyenne had posted 35 more miles per day through 20 days. That’s just 1.75 miles difference per day! Geronimo topped 600 miles for the first time on Day 15, while it was day 30 for Cheyenne.

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Data below shows daily mileage of Cheyenne and Geronimo, total miles they have sailed, their average day, and the difference between them on a given day.

What the #’s show is that despite catamaran. v. trimaran, 19 days difference in start time, french vs. americans, etc. it’s a contest that is being measured in hours and minutes. Appears as though the high speed, high stakes chaos will continue.

Day	Playstation	Geronimo	CHY RT	Gert RT	Ger +/- Cheyenne
1	342.11	495
2	232.48	472.5
3	418.36	324
4	333.23	437
5	355.83	486
6	481.61	444
7	456.59	329
8	468.49	255
9	433.87	225
10	471.49	406
11	336	521.32
12	454.12	517.3
13	447.32	368.55
14	444.85	468
15	566.86	608.61
16	540.44	523.73
17	455.82	382
18	522.31	411
19	445.59	543	8397.37	8217.01	-180.36
20	564.18	520	8771.55	8737.01	34.54
21	574.09
22	422.32
23	488.55
24	406.36
25	584
26	577
27	507
28	506.21
29	526.68
30	623.54
31	559.1
32	478.5
33	485.13
34	508.65
35	484.9
36	437.67
37	346.03
38	264.65
39	277.99
Miles Sailed	17829.92	8737.01
Miles To Go	9170.08	18262.99
Avg Day	457.18	436.85
Days	59.06	61.81

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