Almost six days has been slashed from the sailing record for the historic tea route from Hong Kong to London that was once dominated by 19th-century clippers plying commercial goods from China to Europe.<\/p>\n
An Italian skipper and his four-man crew covered the distance between the two cities via the Cape in 36 days, 2 hours, 37 minutes and 2 seconds, less than half the time it took the fastest clippers in the days of empire and smashing a decade-old mark set by Lionel Lemonchois of France.<\/p>\n