As Ellen Macarthur prepares for her first voyage in Kingfisher, another yachtsman who started his professional career in Southampton, Pete Goss, is putting the finishing touches to his giant catamaran at a yard in Devon.

The scaffolding surrounding Team Philips, the revolutionary 120ft racing yacht conceived for The Race which starts later this year, has finally been removed and the two 130ft mast structures have been completed.

There is still an exhaustive list of works to complete before the launch on February 29 and the naming by Queen Elizabeth II the following month but everything is going to schedule for Goss and his 70-strong team based in Totnes.

The specification of Team Philips reads like a jaw-dropping entry in the Guinness Book of Records - two 120ft wave-piercing hulls measuring 9ft high and 4ft 6in wide, an accommodation pod for six crew which is equivalent to a 50ft yacht, two 70ft beams connecting the hulls and the small matter of 174 bulkheads in each wishbone.

Goss's campaign, which could end up costing around £6 million, will kick off after the London naming ceremony with an attempt on the Jules Verne record, which stands at 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 8 seconds set by Frenchman Olivier de Kersauson on Sport Elec.

Tracy Edwards and her all-women crew were the last British team to beat the record, in the Nigel Irens-designed catamaran Royal & SunAlliance, but it ended in disappointment two years ago with a dismasting.

Back in 1995, Sir Peter Blake and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston had left Hamble in the same boat - at that time named Enza - with a distinguished and ultimately successful crew whose record was broken by Kersauson in May 1997.

With a new record hopefully in the bag, the crew of Team Philips will then set off at midnight on December 31, 2000 to win The Race, a non-stop no rules round-the-world race which has attracted some of the largest, fastest boats ever to be built.

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.