A final bullet for Lloyd Thornburg on New Year's Eve in St Barth

by Rachel Jaspersen 1 Jan 2016 08:12 GMT 31 December 2015

Phaedo^3 wins the St Barth New Years Eve Parade © Rachel Jaspersen

Lloyd Thornburg's MOD70 Phaedo has just broken another record by setting a new time of 1 hour and 5 minutes for rounding the island of St Barth on New Year's Eve. With a maximum speed of 39 knots and rarely going below 30 knots downwind, Phaedo's circumnavigation won them the coveted cup for the St Barth New Years Eve Parade. The accumulation of this year's results have placed Lloyd in the running for the prestigious Rolex Yachtsman of the year award.

After claiming line honours in the RORC Transatlantic Race earlier this month, the crew of Lloyd Thornburg's MOD 70 Phaedo3 have barely had a chance to catch their breath and reflect on their record-breaking season that started by setting a new RORC Caribbean 600 race record last February.

They went on to light the Caribbean race circuit up with wins and impressive results at the St Maarten Heineken Regatta and Les Voiles de St Barth. Phaedo3 also set a new around Antigua record and crushed the Antigua to Newport World Record.

But it wasn't until they got to the UK (by recording the fastest elapsed time in the 2015 Transatlantic Race and then one of their finest results was snapping at the heels of the giant Spindrift 2 all the way around the Rolex Fastnet course before finishing just minutes behind) that they started to claim World Records with some regularity.

In fact, they set three World Records during one week last September.

First, they set a new World Record on the iconic original Fastnet course.

Riding the adrenaline, they then simply turned around and sailed from Plymouth to La Rochelle (over 320 miles) in just over 14 hours. That was fast enough for another World Record.

They were exhausted, exhilarated, and not done yet. They then bashed back across the English Chanel (in the Gale they'd just sailed through) so they could go back to the UK for their third World Record that week—Cowes-Dinard. They claimed it by sailing the 138 miles in just under 4 hours and 49 minutes at an average of almost 29 knots.

Thinking back on his amazing season Thornburg says, "I'm so grateful to have such an amazing team and...I think we were crazier than we thought we were." He's also grateful to be in the running for the highly coveted Rolex Yachtsman of the Year honour.

So Lloyd, Co-skipper Brain Thompson and the rest of the crew may be enjoying some well earned time off. But they're hardly resting on their laurels. Thanks to fantastic support from Musto, Bollé, Marlow Ropes and others, they're prepping Phaedo3 to be even faster in 2016.

World Sailing Speed Records Ratified by WSSRC: (so far)

Antigua to Newport 3 days 5 hours 54 minutes 49 seconds
Fastnet Original Course 27 hours 42 minutes 29 seconds
Plymouth to La Rochelle 14 hours 5 minutes 27 seconds
Cowes to Dinard 4 hours 49 minutes 51 seconds

New course records set:

RORC Caribbean 600 2015 -33 hours 35 minuets 30 seconds
Heineken Race Week 2015 -(around St Maarten long course) 2 hours 7 minutes and 24 seconds
Official around St Maarten record 1 hour 30 minutes 19 seconds
Les Voiles de St Barth Regatta (long race) 1 hour 53 minutes 35 seconds
Guadeloupe to Antigua 1 hour 27 minutes 0 seconds
Around Antigua 3 hours 26 minutes 9 seconds
Around Redonda 5 hours 18 minutes and 58 seconds
Around Jamestown, Rhode Island 56 minutes 33 seconds

Fastest elapsed times