Speedboat pulls plug on Transatlantic attempt

by Mike Sanderson on 1 Jul 2008 At 21:19 (EDT) on Sunday the 29th June, Mike Sanderson and 20 crew members on board the US supermaxi yacht 'SPEEDBOAT' departed from Ambrose Lighthouse, New York in the direction of Lizard Point off the South West coast of England in an attempt to break the transatlantic record.

The current record is held by Mari Cha IV and stands at 6 days, 17 hours, 52 minutes and 39 seconds.

Update:

Hi there,

Thank you for following us on our first Trans-Atlantic record attempt, unfortunately at approx 3-30 am this morning while roaring along at 25 knots we decided to bear away and raise the dagger board due to the speeds starting to get to the point where the boat didn't need them. During the night we had done a few bear aways so we weren't particularly concerned about the manoeuvre, just as the where half way to downwind there was a loud bang and pretty quickly we identified that we had broken the port board. With the trip being one of us having to thread our way through various systems, some of which could have easily ended up with tight reaching work, and us being so early in our trip, we decided that we where better to call into Newport, get the boat back to 100% and live to fight another day.

Although this was very disappointing we did have great news on the trip, and that is that the boat was just flying from the time we left Ambrose light, she was at times out performing her target speeds by 15 to 18% and was happy sitting reaching at 24 knots in 20 knots of wind, so for that we are really excited We have a spare board in the container, we will replace it, re look at the engineering and for now probably re-evaluate what speeds we can use them at until we can identify whether we broke it due to the load of the bear away and speed or that we likely hit something.

We will keep everyone posted with regards to further Weather windows, I have no doubt that we will be back out there charging soon.

Thanks for checking in.

Kind regards

The Speedboat Team

http://www.mike-sanderson.com




















Crew members on board are:
Alex Jackson
Mike Sanderson
Stan Honey
Earl Williams
Bill Erkelens
Robbie Naismith
Neal McDonald
Justin Slattery
Julien Cressant
Andrew Henderson
Kip Harris
John Hildebrand
Nick Bice
Matt Wachowitz
Mike Mottl
Bob Wylie
Flip Wehrheim
Chris HIggins
Ben Bardwell
Chris Coulson
Cromwell Coulson