Maserati Multi70 is ready to set sail for the Tea Route record from Hong Kong to London.
Giovanni Soldini and the other crew members – Guido Broggi, Oliver Herrera, Alex Pella and Sébastien Audigane – plan to set sail on Friday 12th January, between 9am and 11am UTC, late afternoon in Hong Kong.
“The idea is to exploit winds blowing from the North East that has spread from the starting area along the whole east coast of Indochina”, explains Pierre Lasnier, routeur of the Maserati team who will follow the record on land. “We expect that wind to stop on Tuesday 16th and the flow will start to break in the South, over the Sunda Strait. At this point, it looks better for Maserati Multi 70 to start as soon as possible to find good conditions to go South, at least up to South Vietnam or Malaysia”.
Giovanni Soldini explains that “This is not really what we called a perfect weather window, but we do not know if and when we will find again conditions like these to leave. So we made the decision together, with the whole crew last night.”
The Hong Kong-London route, 13.000 miles long, is the third longest route, after the circumnavigation of the planet and the New York-San Francisco route, among the various ocean passages ratified by the World Sailing Speed Record Council. The record time is currently of 41 days, 21 hours and 26 minutes, set by Gitana 13 in 2008.
For the record, the trimaran has been restored to MOD mode, without the foils that make Maserati Multi70 rise from the water, in order to limit the risk of impact with floating objects during navigation.
