The Fastest Boat on Earth?

The pursuit of outright speed records has been an obsession of multihull sailors for some time now. Of course, there really are different ways to look at this, depending on what out and out speed means. 500 meter course? New York to London? 24 hour? Around the world? Those are the four that I look at. Another one that is just pure conjecture, the around the buoys fastest boat. So here is where each of these stands right now. For all the records, look here:

Currently, the Jules Verne trophy, for around the world going from the lizard at the end of the English channel around Cape Hope, below Australia, around Cape Horn, and back to the English channel. This was the mythical “around the world in 80 days” course. It is currently held by Groupama III, a maxi trimaran captained by Frank Cammas. The record stands at 48 days. This year, Banque Populaire, another French maxi tri was given a good chance to take this one down, but suffered damage and had to retire.

The record from New York to London is 3 days and 15 hours now, and is held by Banque Populaire. On that trip, they broke the 24 hour record, which is 908 miles in that period. Just think…our golden number for a performance cruising cat is 200 miles in 24 hours. 908? Whoa!

IF I could chose any boat to go around a race course, it would probably be the America’s Cup winning trimaran “Oracle” Hard to argue with that boat, super fast, able to tack and gybe effortlessly, rigid wing, unreal downwind. If there is a faster boat around a course on earth, I don’t know what it is.

The 500 meter, outright speed record is the only sailing record not dominated by mulihulls.  Hydrophere, a wild trimaran foiler briefly held this record, but over the years, it has been dominated by windsurfers, and more recently, kite surfers. Robby Douglas, and old friend of mine since he was a kid, is the king, and looks to be the fastest guy, having held the record, lost it, and now he has taken it back. 56 knots. Slow down dude! Well, and then there is ice!!!