17-year-old three days from record (From Boating Cornwall)

17-year-old three days from record

4:45pm Monday 24th August 2009 in

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Seventeen year-old British sailor Mike Perham is now within three days of becoming the world's youngest solo circumnavigator.

He now expects his 50ft yacht Totallymoney.com to reach The Lizard line marking the start and finish point of his 30,000 mile record-setting odyssey this Thursday - two months inside the current record.

Today he was 460 miles away travelling at ten knots.

He is not yet quite home and dry. Behind him, the tail end of Hurricane Bill is expected to overtake Mike early on Wednesday to provide one last test of endurance for this teenager from Potters Bar, Hertfordshire. If his yacht Totallymoney.com survives that trial, then Guinness World Records is standing by at the at Lizard Point, Cornwall, to ratify his record.

Over the weekend, Mike survived a collision, crash gybe and 40ft swells. He wrote in his blog today: "I was standing on deck gazing out across the sea when suddenly WHACK! We hit something. I jumped in the stern and saw that the autopilot ram had been partially torn away and could hear that not-so-lovely noise of cracking fiberglass.! I looked over the back but couldn't see anything amiss.

“I knocked out the pin connecting the autopilot and the boat went into a nasty crash gybe. The mainsail whacked across and we rounded up into a stiff 30knot breeze. We started sailing backwards, just as I had hoped, and I suddenly felt the tiller go 'free'. So whatever it was, fell off!

“But the fun wasn't over! When we gybed, one of the attachments holding the full length sail battens had snapped. Not good! Now I was faced with an hour long struggle to get the mainsail down to replace it. Then came the really hard bit - getting the main up the mast again. It was blowing 30knots and because the head of the sail is so large, it was forever catching on the lazy jacks and took an hour and a half to finally get the main back up to the first reef mark.

“Now I am bracing myself for Hurricane Bill. I've currently got 35knots of wind and some serious seas. A rough 40foot swell too! The sea has picked up so much because this Big Bad Low has had a long way to really build up. I expect to be saying "hi" to Hurricane Bill in the early hours of Wednesday."