Expectations Obliterated- 39.51 knots aboard Lending Club 2

by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 26 Jun 2015 After having spent more than a decade of my life covering the sport of sailing, I thought that I’d experienced it all: Volvo Open 70s, super maxis, mini maxis, IMOCA 60s, and high-performance dinghies, not to mention plenty of well-sailed Corinthian-level monohulls. But then I received an email from Nicola Breymaier, inviting me to join her husband, Ryan Breymaier, one of America’s most accomplished single-handed skippers, in San Francisco aboard the 105-foot trimaran, Lending Club 2 (ex Banque Populaire VII). The email had barely arrived by the time I was booking my plane tickets to SFO.

I knew the day was going to be special when Nicola sent me out to the boat on the RIB ahead of the other guests (Lending Club employees and friends of company founder and co-skipper Renaud Laplanche). I climbed aboard the mighty tri’s starboard ama and was greeted by Breymaier and the sound of the Grateful Dead playing over the boat’s stereo system (appropriate, given the city that lay in the background, not to mention the cult following this legendary band has always commanded amongst sailors).

Glancing around the boat, I was struck by the pencil-thin hulls that seemed to stretch forward forever, by the boat’s mighty rotating wingmast, by her miles and miles of running rigging, by her powerful-looking foils, and by the fact that all of these lines were controlled by two coffee grinders—no hydraulics on the entire boat! Fold-down Plexiglas spray shields were fitted in front of each steering wheel, and acres of netting extended in all directions. The full mainsail luffed quietly in the gathering morning breeze as the fog layer burned off, and massive blocks and an impressive curved traveler system harnessed this carbon-fiber “engine”.

At Breymaier’s invitation, I climbed belowdecks using the two parallel ladders that drop, vertically, from the deck hatch into the crew quarters. I’m used to cave-like raceboat interiors where you need a headlamp to find your seabag, but that wasn’t a problem here: While the cabin was carbon-fiber black, it was so small that the light coming through the deck hatch was more than enough to allow me to grope around belowdecks without an extra light source.

Quietly, I imagine a crew living in this closet-sized space during transoceanic runs or Jules Verne attempts and realize that your average college dormitory is far more luxurious than this space. A few Spartan pipe berths hung from the bulkheads, and an extremely basic galley stood ready to produce boiling water. (I didn’t see a head, but the daggerboard casing is commonly used as a urinal, as are the nets, abovedecks.) Otherwise, creature comforts were limited to the small, portable Bluetooth speaker that was playing Jerry ballads abovedecks. Everything else was purely business-minded. I dumped my backpack on a pipeberth and climbed back up the double parallel ladders, placing a foot and hand on each ladder before popping back up into the full daylight.

The first group of guests arrived, Breymaier spun the wheel, and Lending Club 2 began to sail: slowly at first as the wind bent around the city towers, but we quickly built our pace as we escaped the lee of the land. I glanced at the speedo and it was barely registering double digits as the windward ama began to lift from the water. Instinctively, I grabbed onto a rail near the steering wheel, but I quickly realized that the ride would be anything but violent, at least in the small waves that were populating the Bay. If anything, the boat felt more and more stable as Breymaier and company worked to build the apparent wind on the boat’s massive sailplan, which now included the full main and the J2 headsail.

Creaks and groans emitted from loaded blocks and winches, and the grinders earned their keep as we climbed to weather, passing Alcatraz Island en route towards the Golden Gate Bridge. The still-gathering breeze was only blowing 10-12 knots, but this was still enough to send Lending Club 2 scampering along at 15-20 knots, her crew and passengers absolutely unaffected by the two-to-three-foot seas that were developing near the bridge: The boat is so long, her freeboard so mighty, and her speed so great that spray and splash simply can’t reach the crew on the nets, at least in these benign conditions (although the boat carries a stern-fitted water-ballast tank, which is used to help promote a bow-up attitude when the boat is surfing down big waves under her bare poles in the icy depths of the Southern Ocean).

We sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge with (ballpark) 60 feet separating the tip of our mast from the bridge’s underbelly. Breymaier bore off and Lending Club 2 accelerated fast enough to require me to reshuffle my feet on her carbon-fiber decks.

Instantly, the speedo was reporting speeds in the mid-twenties, and the amount of apparent air on deck was noticeably stronger. The windward ama rotated skyward by a few more degrees and we tickled 30 knots for the first time as we scorched along on the waters between Sausalito and Angel Island before outrunning our breeze.

Breymaier tacked and we repeated the drill, much like school children reclimbing a snow-covered hill with their sleds, eager to press things just a little bit further.

Again, Lending Club 2’s gargantuan mast and sailplan sliped under the bridge, and again Breymaier queued us up for the pleasure ride. I started smiling as I watched the numbers climb on the speedo, content to see if we could break into the low-30s (which would be a new speed record for me), when Breymaier grabbed my arm and pulled me to the wheel, which I eagerly took.

The boat felt unlike anything I’d ever driven, with the possible exception of extremely powerful dinghies. Turn the wheel even slightly and you quickly create a noticeable change to the boat’s apparent wind.

Hit the sweet spot and the boat will easily sail two or three times faster than the true windspeed, but bungle this and she can outrun her breeze or simply fall way off her numbers, as I experienced firsthand. Fortunately, Breymaier is as patient a teacher as he is a kind person, and-with a little coaching on driving a vessel that measures 105 feet by 70 feet, I was able to press the boat and hang onto her sweet spot as the speedo reported 28.5 knots.

I smiled widely, having never sailed this fast before, and certainly not with my hand on the wheel of a machine as sophisticated as Lending Club 2.

Eventually, our sled-riding session came to an end and we sailed back towards the city front, crossing the same waters where the 34th America’s Cup was sailed, where the RIB ferried out the next round of corporate guests (and brought the first group back ashore). Breymaier generously signaled me to stay put, a command that I was more than happy to oblige given the still gathering breeze: I hadn’t been this excited to press a sled down a hill since I was a kid, and I pinched myself to ensure that I wasn't dreaming.

Given the fact that there were only a few of these mighty tris in existence on the planet, it’s a rare treat when one actually leaves France for a visit to the USA…and even then, the ports of call are usually on the East Coast, where the breeze simply can’t touch the conditions here in San Francisco Bay.

When Laplanche leased Lending Club 2, his goals were simple: break three big ocean-racing records, including the Cowes, England to Dinard, France run; the Newport to Bermuda run, and the Transpac Race. The team shaved hours off the Cowes to Dinard run, before they utterly destroyed the Bermuda record (posting a time of 23 hours, 9 minutes and 52 seconds for the 635-nautical-mile track), but both of these sprints were races against a time clock, where the team had the benefit of being able to wait for an ideal weather window.

For official Transpac Race record, the team, including co-skippers Breymaier and Laplanche, will depart Los Angeles on July 18, along with all of the other fast boats, so they will be at the mercy of the available breeze. In the meantime, however, Laplanche viewed a San Francisco stopover as the perfect opportunity to expose his employees to high-end sailing-an incredibly generous act, given the cost and complication of operating a sailing machine like Lending Club 2.

We teed-up a few more speed runs, this time breaking the 30-knot barrier with a top speed of 34.6 knots, but the ride felt smooth. In fact, mid-30s on Lending Club 2 felt like the same sort of vessel motion that most monohulls experience when sailing 8 knots in flat water: steady bow attitude, minimal heel angle and a feeling of comfort and safety. (As I later described to my non-sailing friends, sailing at 35 knots aboard Lending Club 2 felt like driving 90 miles per hour down a gun-barrel-straight highway in a ragtop BMW with the top down and the breeze in your face…a lot of apparent air, yes, but aboard a vehicle that’s capable of delivering far faster, scarier speeds, on far scarier mountain roads.) ?

My grin felt etched onto my face and I was aware that I was probably acting like an eight-year-old boy on Christmas morning, but this day of high-speed sailing was easily one of the coolest things that the jolly old man who slides down chimneys had ever brought me.

But like all sailors who are given the right conditions, the right boat, and the right group of professional sailors to help spur the mighty beast along, I was eager to see even higher numbers on the speedo. (As an aside, Lending Club 2 hit 43.7 knots the day before, the fastest speed that Breymaier had ever seen on her speedos, as an 18-year-old at-risk-teen was driving…proof positive that with the right coaching, even a troubled teen who has never set foot on a sailboat before can fly two hulls.)

Luckily, both Mother Nature and Breymaier were more than happy to deliver, and we queued up under the Golden Gate Bridge for a final run towards Angel Island. I walked across the giant nets to a spot just abaft of the forward crossbeam, sheltered a bit from the rushing apparent breeze, and conveniently located right near the speedo, hoping that this would be “the run”.

I was right: a puff hit, and Breymaier expertly played the wheel, building the boat’s breeze and then delicately footing off. 32.6, 33.9, 35.7, 37.8, 38.9…time seemed suspended as the numbers climb higher and higher…39.1, 39.3, 39.4…from my perch, it was obvious that Breymaier was dropping the hammer as hard as he possibly could and that Lending Club 2 was delivering everything that she had (given her “hospitality mode” and some fifteen extra bodies onboard) in these winds when the mighty tri delivered her final gift: 39.51 knots, a number that I never thought I’d see with my own two eyes.

The amount of wind coming over the decks was outrageous, but here again the ride felt smooth and stable, and I wondered how much extra wick the boat really had, if given the proper seas and low-pressure weather systems.

Breymaier gybed past Alcatraz Island and we furled up the J2. My joy ride was over, but it was impossible to peel the smile off my wind-burned face. I thanked Breymaier for a fantastic day of sailing and climbed back into the RIB, feeling like a kid going to bed on the night of December 25.

Sure, the toys will still be there tomorrow, but there’s no question that it will be a long, long wait until the jolly old man and his magical reindeer deliver anything even half as conscience-expanding as this ride aboard this magnificent wind machine.

Many thanks to Ryan and Nicola Breymaier, Renaud Laplanche and the Lending Club 2 team for a truly outrageous day of sailing on one of the nicest pieces of water imaginable!