Across the Atlantic at 500 Miles/Day

Lloyd Thornburg’s St. Barth- and Newport Beach-based MOD70 Phaedo3 has added yet another record to her season of greatness, finishing first in the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s 3,000-mile race from the Canary Islands to Grenada. Skippered by Brian Thompson — with Paul Allen of Santa Cruz along as crew — the lime-green trimaran averaged an astonishing 500+ miles a day to finish in just under six days. The crew consisted of owner Lloyd Thornburg, skipper Brian Thompson, Miles Seddon, Paul Allen, Sam Goodchild, Henry Bomby, and Pete Cumming.

To give you an idea of what it was like aboard, here’s a crew posting from two days ago:

“Every watch is showing an average of 28 to 30 knots of speed. We are not holding back at all, what with the sistership Concise 10 right behind us. The person at the helm carves his way through the waves like a skier through a mogul field. The driver has to follow the liquid terrain to harmonize boat speed, heel angle, and apparent wind angle to keep our speed constant through the ever-changing waterscape in front of our Phaedo3’s bows, trying not to fly the main hull or stuff the bows. And generally doing the former will precipitate the latter.”

Important races coming up for Phaedo3 are the Caribbean 600 in February and the Voiles de St. Barth in April. But knowing Lloyd as we do, we suspect he’ll make several other record attempts between those events.