Mrs James has hopes of record voyage

Press, 4 May 1978, Page 3

Mrs James has hopes of record voyage

NZPA London The New Zealand yachtswoman, Naomi James, is only a month’s sailing away from the record for a round-the-world solo voyage. Sailing briskly through the South Atlantic with the trade winds pushing her along, Mrs James hopes to be back in Britain in early June, beating the record of 274 days that earned Sir Francis Chichester his knighthood. “I am in great spirits and the boat is going well. My hopes of breaking the record are looking good,” she told her sponsor, London’s “Daily Express” newspaper, in a radio call. Mrs James has only 9600 km of her 48,000 km vbyage left in the 16.7 m Express Crusader which another round-the-world yachtsman, Chay Blyth, lent her. She has survived several severe storms, a capsize off Cape Horn, and damage to the yacht which forced her to abandon plans to sail to abandon plans to sail nonHer parents, Mr and Mrs R. Power, of Ngongotaha, near Rotorua, who flew to Britain at the week-end, will go to Dartmouth to be with her husband, Robert James, when she sails in.

Although Mrs James is concerned that she might become becalmed in the doldrums, her father told the “Daily Express’’: “Nothing will stop her. She is tremendously determined and very, very brave.” . Meanwhile, her husband, who skippered an entry in the Whitbread round-the-wbrld race, said he could never make a solo trip him= self. “Naomi is quite a girl,” he said. A former schoolteacher, Mrs James, who is 29, started sailing only in 1975.