After 59 days New Zealander Pete Bethune and his crew aboard the 78 foot (24 metre) bio-diesel fuelled trimaran Earthrace are just 1,000 nautical miles from the finish line in Sagunto, Spain.
The 1998 world record set by Cable & Wireless is just shy of 75 days, so if all goes well for the next few days Earthrace could set a new record of 61 or 62 days, depending on their actual arrival time off the Vulcan shipyard they left on April 27th 2008.
Under blue skies and flat seas, Earthrace powered west north west towards Malta today, covering 513 miles in the last 24 hours at an average of 21.3 knots.
Having covered 22,401 miles in the last 59 days, they are a comfortable 3,680 miles ahead of the record C&W pace.
Bethune comments today that the Earthrace crew is focusing on sneaking into Sagunto on Friday afternoon ‘fingers crossed’.
The boat is going well, though they did discover a little water had splashed into their main fuel tanks so they changed their primary filters.
You can listen to Bethune’s latest audio report here now.
Sat phone report from Earthrace - Click play button twice to listen
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