INT: Top Yacht studio, usual three presenters, studio audience, various boats hanging behind etc
Clarkson: Now earlier we described the latest of the Top Yacht Challenges. This one was bigger and no doubt crazier than anything we had done earlier - to sail across the Atlantic by Laser. And can I just add - it was all Hammond's idea.
Hammond: But it wasn't all in one go but in six stages and with three sailors taking it in turns to sail our little Laser, which of course May decided to give a name and called her Lisa.
Clarkson: So Lisa set off from Putney with Aqua Stig, Ben Ainslie and Anna Tunnicliffe taking turns to sail her. First leg was along the East coast of England and Scotland up to the Orkneys.
May: And an interesting time they had of it. They got stuck in Aldeburgh when conditions in the North Sea were a bit dodgy, almost got run over by a container ship outside Newcastle, got told off for not showing enough lights in the Forth, and by the time they got to the destination they were quite glad to hand Lisa over to us to do the offshore leg to Iceland.
Clarkson: 677 nautical miles in 7 days was pretty good going, but we had a lot tougher challenge ahead of us. 834 nautical miles to Iceland, with two long offshore legs from the Orkneys to the Shetland Islands and then from the Faroes to Iceland.
Hammond: The last of these was 240 nautical miles of open water. Arctic conditions where storms can appear without notice and where survival times in the freezing water was measured in minutes.
May: It was therefore with much misgiving that we packed our dry suits and fly off to the Orkneys to take up the challenge.....
