Twenty-one big, opulent sailboats are set to begin a journey across the North Atlantic today, seeking to smash the world's oldest sailing record in the Transatlantic Challenge.
The fleet of yachts from 70 to 250 feet long was originally scheduled to leave Ambrose Light off Manhattan yesterday, but a forecast of gale-force winds delayed the start. The goal is to get to the Lizard off the tip of England in under 12 days, 4 hours, 1 minute, 19 seconds, the time it took the schooner Atlantic in a race in May 1905. Much has happened since, including two world wars, the first started by Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II, the wealthy German royal whose gentleman's challenge precipitated the 1905 race. Rich Willy got his butt kicked both times as his 158-foot schooner Hamburg (ironically designed and built in England) lost to the 163-foot American entry Atlantic. Then he led his country to defeat in World War I.
Maybe that's one reason it took so long to organize a sequel. Organizers like to say the Atlantic's mark is the oldest standing record in sailing, but it doesn't take much probing to see why. There's been only one event on the same course since -- in 1997, when 16 entries battled 10 days of headwinds and the quickest, American George Lindemann's 170-foot schooner Adela, raised the Lizard in just under 14 days.
Washington's own Craig Venter, the wildly successful human-genome scientist, won class honors for modern boats that year with his 85-foot sloop Sorcerer, which took 15 1/2 days to get there. A race subsequently was scheduled for 2002, but scrubbed after the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center attacks.
Both the 1905 and 1997 races were dominated by traditional yacht designs. This year's will be different with some fast, modern entries; everyone expects the record to fall hard. Likeliest to smash it is Mari Cha IV, a 140-foot, schooner-rigged, ultralight speedster made of carbon fiber with a crew of 24 America's Cup-class professionals and money to burn on sails and gear.
Mari Cha IV is owned by Robert Miller, who made a fortune in duty-free shops, then sold his business to global holding company Louis Vuitton/Moet-Hennesey for well over $1 billion in 1996. His three daughters married well -- one to a Getty, one to a Greek royal and one to a German prince. Miller, who keeps a low profile, is said to live in Hong Kong, Manhattan and on a 32,000-acre sporting estate in Yorkshire when he isn't campaigning Mari Cha IV.
His boat was built to break records. It set the mark for fastest passage from New York to the Lizard in October 2003, finishing in 6 days 17 hours 52 minutes at an average speed of over 20 knots. Averaging 20 knots across the Atlantic in a big sailboat sounds like fun but it had its downside, says Jef D'Etiveaud, Mari Cha's project manager and navigator. He was on the crew that waited four days for strong winds in 2003. They finally left New York on the leading edge of a low-pressure system and barreled north to iceberg country in 25 to 30 knots of wind and thick fog. They followed the Great Circle Route, the shortest distance to England, which runs north toward Iceland and Greenland.
"We didn't see the bow of the boat for three days," D'Etiveaud said.
Speed, fog and icebergs are a treacherous trio, as ill-fated passengers on the Titanic learned long ago. To keep thing safe, rules for this year's race, co-sponsored by the New York Yacht Club and England's Royal Yacht Squadron, establish a northern limit beyond which racers cannot go, to keep them clear of the ice.
While Mari Cha IV is a strong favorite for finish-line honors, she will get competition from the fleet's newest boat, 100-foot Maximus, which just arrived from New Zealand for its maiden race. Like Mari Cha, it is made of carbon fiber and has an adjustable keel with a bulb of lead at the bottom that can be tipped up to a 40-degree angle with hydraulic rams to level the hull when it heels under the pressure of strong winds.
Maximus is co-owned by Kiwi businessmen Bill Buckley and Charles St. Clair Brown, who plan to campaign it against a budding fleet of similar 100-footers owned by other wealthy yachtsmen around the world. Brown said he expects as many as a half-dozen of the big sloops to be on the starting line for this year's Sydney-Hobart Race in December in Australia.
He said Maximus's chances against Mari Cha IV will be best if the wind is from the east, forcing the boats to go directly into it, or from the west, when racing will be dead downwind. "If we're reaching [with the wind coming from one side or the other], it will be hard to beat them," he said. "But we're here to win, not just compete."
Win or lose, said Brown, the Transatlantic Challenge is an event worthy of the impressive fleet that gathered in New York today. "It has the chance to become a classic, alongside the Fastnet [in England], the Sydney-Hobart and the Transpac [San Francisco to Hawaii].
"It's a real ocean race, largely because of where it starts and where it goes, from one of the world's great capitals to another. The route is challenging and the conditions are potentially dangerous.
"What a wonderful race and a wonderful history," said Brown, waxing lyrical, "and how amazing that the record hasn't been broken in 100 years."
