During the current edition of the yearly The Ocean Race, which challenges some of the best boats and crews in a six-month around-the-world test, racing yachts are breaking records for the distances traveled by a monohull vessel. At the end of last week, two records were broken in a 24-hour period as the racing ships were on their fifth leg of the journey from Newport, Rhode Island, to Aarhus, Denmark.
In Leg 5 of The Ocean Race, Boris Herrmann’s Team Malizia broke a new monohull world record by covering 641.13 nautical miles in 24 hours at an average speed of 26.71 knots (50 km/h). Less than 24 hours after their Swiss rivals, Team Malizia set the record. With a distance of 640.9 nm the day before, Team Holcim-PRB broke the previous record held by the 100-foot maxi-monohull Comanche.
The day’s race did not feel like they were pushing, but in the final three hours, anticipation that they might break the record began to grow, according to German skipper Boris Herrmann.
Setting this new standard, according to the team, was an illustration of how well captain Herrmann and French designer VPLP collaborated to develop a new type of IMOCA (International Monohull Open Class Association, which oversees the class of 60-foot (18.28 meter) vessel). There is little question, they claimed, that the designer and Boris took some risky but intelligent choices when creating their new boat after winning the lengthy Southern Ocean Leg, The Roaring Forties Trophy (fastest Cape of Good Hope to Cape Horn passage), and now breaking the 24-hour world distance record.
Herrmann added, “It’s nice to see that the boat can do so well. “We got great weather, with a calm sea, a consistent breeze from the proper direction, and the ideal angle for such a long time. The only sail alterations we made were to put and take out a reef, which caused a brief slowdown. Other than that, nothing else caused a prolonged slowdown. The waves occasionally got a little bit smaller, causing us to slow down to 18 knots and briefly become stranded in the water. The majority of the time, the boat would fly at 27 to 34 mph, perfectly navigating the sea.
Source: maritime-executive