Lymington yachtbuilders Green Marine are having a busy time.

The firm, who last week won the contract to build the new Volvo Ocean Racing 60 for the Swedish syndicate Assa Abloy, is also hard at work preparing Steve Fossett's mega-racer Playstation for The Race.

The giant 105-foot catamaran has had another 20 feet added to bow and stern to give her more power, in particular upwind and in big seas.

A contender to Pete Goss's Team Philips and Grant Dalton's Club Med, Playstation is expected to be back in the water in mid-November, leaving Fossett and his crew just six weeks to complete his tuning before The Race gets underway from Barcelona on December 31, 2000.

While in the shed, the team at Green Marine, which built Intrum Justitia for the Whitbread in 1993/94, have added new trampolines and refitted the twin diesel engines that were removed for the trans-Atlantic record attempts.