comanche yacht owner

Jim Cooney buys Comanche – the super maxi will now call Australia home

One of the favourites to take line honours in the 2017 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, LDV Comanche, was purchased today (14 December 2017) by Sydney’s Jim Cooney from its American owner Jim Clark, making the super maxi yacht an Australian owned and skippered entry when it starts the Boxing Day classic.

“LDV Comanche is a truly awe-inspiring yacht, and the chance to race to Hobart, alongside my children Julia and James with a world class crew, is a once in a lifetime opportunity too good to pass up. I started ocean racing 30 years ago and we have raced as a family in many parts of the world for 12 years, but this is an incredible opportunity for us to challenge for the world’s toughest blue water classic,” says Jim Cooney, who finished sixth on line in last year’s race at the helm of his Volvo 70 ‘Maserati’ and campaigned his iconic maxi Brindabella for seven years before that.

“This year competition is fierce, with the strongest line up of super maxis ever seen in one race. Depending on conditions, any of the 100 footers could take line honours, it threatens be one of the best races in the history of the event,” Cooney stated today.

Jim Cooney is the Chairman and majority shareholder of TCI Renewables, a professional wind energy development company headquartered in Oxford, UK. Jim is a Chartered Engineer who co-founded TCI in Australia in 1996 and successfully developed the business to span the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and the United States. He is an accomplished industry leader in renewable energy, specialising in wind energy, and under his direction TCI Renewables has developed some of the largest wind farms in the UK.  In 2005 Jim was honoured with the prestigious Ernst & Young Australian Entrepreneur of the Year.  He holds degrees from the University of Sydney, University of London and Imperial College, London.

LDV Comanche will continue to carry the colours of the Chinese vehicle manufacturer LDV, which is using the yacht and the race as part of the launch of  its new LDV T60 Ute.

The crew on LDV Comanche reads like a who’s who of the sailing world and following the change in ownership, will gain some new names. As well as Jim Cooney, the crew will now include Jim’s son and daughter Julia and James Cooney alongside Waratah Jeremy Tilse.

The stellar crew includes three time America’s cup winner and 2015 Rolex Sydney Hobart Winner Jimmy Spithill (Australia); eleven time winner of the Transpac race and round the world race winner Stan Honey (USA); round the world race winner Brad Jackson (New Zealand); Olympic and round the world sailor Dirk de Ridder (Netherlands); multiple America’s Cup sailor and Rolex Sydney Hobart winner Warwick Fleury (New Zealand); America’s Cup sailor, Nick Burridge (New Zealand); Olympic, America’s Cup and round the world sailor Shannon Falcone (UK); Rolex Sydney Hobart race winner on Comanche, John Von Schwarz (USA); six time round the world racer and seven time America’s Cup competitor, Tony ‘Trae’ Rae (New Zealand); Sydney Hobart winner on board Comanche and the sport’s world renowned ‘Mr Fixit’, Casey Smith (Australia); Extreme sailing expert Stuart Pollard (Australia); round the world sailor Justin Slattery (Ireland); Rolex Sydney Hobart winner on Comanche Keats Keeley (USA); round the world sailor David Rolfe (Australia); and project manager Tim Hackett who has managed some of the leading teams around the world.

Launched as ‘Comanche’, and now called ‘LDV Comanche’ for the 2017 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race, the 100 foot maxi racing yacht holds a remarkable list of records, all of which show her to be the ideal yacht for the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race. The yacht holds the 24 hour sailing distance record for monohulls and the trans-Atlantic crossing record of 5 days, 14 hours, 21 minutes and 25 seconds. In addition to the 2015 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race, she won the no less tough Fastnet Race. This year she smashed the monohull record in the Transpac race with an average speed of 20.2 knots.

‘LDV Comanche’s nickname, “the aircraft carrier”, gives away what sets her apart from two of her rivals, Black Jack and Wild Oats XI. Indeed, her beam at the stern is so great it could accommodate both Black Jack and Wild Oats XI. Her optimum heel angle is anything over 20 degrees and she has the same wetted surface as Wild Oats XI at 25 degrees. The 46 metre/150 feet high mast sits directly above the canting keel and she designed deliberately to be able to – just – slip under Sydney Harbour Bridge. The mast has a static load of 75 tonnes and 150 tonnes under sail, or, to put it another way, the same weight as 80 LDV T60 Utes hanging from the mast.

Suspended from the mast is a 410 square metre mainsail, which will carry a massive picture of an LDV T60 Ute for the race. In downwind configuration, this expands to a massive 1022 square metres and the largest spinnaker is 1100 square metres. Under the yacht is a canting keel that may be swung out 35 degrees in either direction in as little as 25 seconds, while there is space on either side of the hull for 6.5 tonnes of water in the ballast tanks.

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Comanche – A Fast Racer

October 18, 2015 By Daniel Mihai Popescu 2 Comments

Comanche is a 100ft (30.5 meters) sailing yacht, which has been built with the scope to break every yachting record possible, winning prestigious yacht races, and meaning that it will probably become the fastest. The beautiful yacht, a Super Maxi class, has been commissioned by the Netscape creator, James H. Clark and his wife, the former Victoria’s Secret’s Australian model, Kristy Hinze.

The sleek black and red yacht has been built under a contract with a lot of confidentiality clauses by Hodgdon Yachts from Maine. Comanche has one of the largest single-infusion hulls constructed in America, and even globally. The oven used to cure the hull and superstructure is the largest one in the United States, and has been built by Hodgdon Yachts itself. They have been using advanced composites for several years, both for yachts and for military projects.

Super Maxi Class Yacht, Comanche

The naval architects are Van Peteghem Lauriot Prévost (VPLP) and Guillaume Verdier, acknowledged names in the racing world. The 150 foot mast has been constructed by Southern Spars and the sails are from industry leader, North Sails , including a spinnaker of more than 11,000 square feet. Launched in September 2014, Comanche is the result of studies of the IMOCA Macif and Banque Populaire, first and second in the 2012 Vendee Globe. Different from her other 100′ rivals, like Wild Oats XI or Perpetual Loyal , with her large beam, her mast far aft and a boom directly over the transom, Comanche has a much larger sail plan. The cockpit has been designed for manual maneuvers rather than hydraulic and therefore saves weight. Comanche has a powerful hull shape and a maximum draft of 6.5m in order to enter most ports. With a low freeboard and lateral ballast the center of gravity has been lowered to gain power.

Comanche and its crew, downward view

Comanche is commanded by renowned US skipper Ken Read, and raced by a world-class crew of twenty-one international sailors.

Her performances, like what Ken Read has explained that happened during the Transatlantic Race 2015, an average speed of 25 knots per total, a top speed of 38.8 knots, and large distances passed in the mid 30’s knots, are things which will make me to dedicate more space to this kind of posts. I am thrilled by what man can achieve with a good boat, and pure racing, like this, using just the power of the wind and the ability to float over the furious waves, even to brake them if necessary.

Comanche Sails!! FAST!! from Onne van der Wal on Vimeo .

Above is a very short (too short) video made by Onne van der Wal, which shows Comanche sailing. Before publishing this, I have been looking for more videos, maybe more relevant, like I wish for this website to be, a better compilation of related sources on different matters.

So, I found this on YouTube, posted by sailingshack, where Ken Read presents the magnificent boat.

It really is a great boat, a very expensive one as well, it took $15 million to be built, and many millions more for the rest (called “campaigns”), and it made second place in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, losing to Wild Oats XI , and also second in the Transatlantic race 2015 (TR 15), loosing to Rambler 88 with a difference of only seven hours, which is really incredible, because in such a competition, they arrive at days distance. More on racing, in future posts, maybe I’ll make a new category.

I hope you like it and I’ll tell you more about yacht racing in general. What do you think, are you speed racers?

If you like what you read, please subscribe to this blog by completing the form . If you want to help more, start by following us on Twitter , and like our page on Facebook . You don’t know what good things may happen. To lighten your day, check our pins on Pinterest , we can be friends there too. Oh, and if you need a really good looking blog attached to your site, or just for fun, to express your feelings more competitively, read this Own Your Website offer! Thank you very much.

Copyright © 2015 The Yacht Owner – Comanche – A Fast Racer

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About Daniel Mihai Popescu

Daniel Mihai Popescu is a ship engineer with background in sea transportation, real estate, yacht brokerage, construction, entrepreneurship. Avid reader, traveled the world, explorer of the human nature. Never stopped learning, now I create and manage Wordpress based sites . • Twitter • Facebook • LinkedIn • Instagram • Pinterest • Goodreads • Medium •

January 7, 2016 at 14:04

Buna ziua, Mi-as dori un articol scris de dvs. despre velierele cu chila leagan, swing keel sailboat cum sunt cunoscute. Multumesc.

January 7, 2016 at 20:31

Am să caut mai multe informații despre ele, mie tipul ăsta de chilă mi se pare o complicație inutilă deși îi văd utilitatea. Mi-ar face plăcere dacă v-ați abona la newsletter, șamd…

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Published on December 14th, 2017 | by Editor

Comanche finds new owner Down Under

Published on December 14th, 2017 by Editor -->

Comanche, the innovative record-breaking 100 foot maxi yacht designed by VPLP and Guillaume Verdier and launched in 2014 for Jim and Kristy Clark, has been sold to Australian Jim Cooney.

The yacht was to compete in the 628 nm Sydney Hobart Race as LDV Comanche under partnership between Clark and two-time race winner Neville Crichton, but the last-minute sale now will have Sydney skipper Cooney at the helm.

“I have stepped down as skipper, we still have sponsorship for the boat, and if for any reason he can’t do it, I will step back into this shoes,” Crichton said.

Crichton had assembled a world-class crew for the race – including America’s Cup skipper James Spithill and many of the men who raced her to victory in the 2015 Hobart race. The crew will stay aboard while Cooney, daughter Julia, son James and Waratah Jeremy Tilse join the crew.

“We are all just so excited about doing the race on her, she is one not the most remarkable yachts in the world. I’ve actually never sailed it before. We are all going sailing on Tuesday (Dec. 19) to understand what sort of beast she is.’’

The new ownership means every supermaxi on the start line of the Sydney to Hobart will be racing for an Australian victory. The other three are Black Jack (previously Alfa Romeo), Infotrack (previously Perpetual Loyal), and Wild Oats XI.

“How amazing that pretty much the four fastest boats in the world are now all Australian owned,” said Cooney, chairman and major shareholder of TCI Renewables, a wind energy development company.

“This year competition is fierce, with the strongest line up of super maxis ever seen in one race. Depending on conditions, any of the 100 footers could take line honours, it threatens be one of the best races in the history of the event.”

The race starts on Boxing Day at 1300hrs AEDT and will be broadcast live on the Seven Network throughout Australia.

Event details – Entry list – Facebook

Source: perthnow.com

Tags: Comanche , Jim Clark , Neville Crichton , Sydney Hobart

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Comanche – the 31.5m sailing superyacht built to win

Sailing superyacht Comanche is a boat that belongs at the front of the racing pack. Comanche _surprised everyone watching the Sydney Hobart race in December 2014 when the brand new 30.5 metre Hodgdon Yachts-built speed machine was pictured tearing along ahead of Sydney Hobart legend Wild Oats XI. It was an advantage that _Comanche was able to maintain all the way to the Bass Strait during the 2014 Rolex Sydney Hobart. But when 30-knot winds failed to materialise, the more slender Wild Oats XI slipped past Comanche and into the lead, a position she held all the way to Hobart for victory and her eighth line honours. Second place is never going to be good enough for Comanche ’s owner, software mogul Jim Clark, but it was a minor miracle his yacht was there at all. She was only launched in September 2014, so the famously brutal race represented a kind of masochistic shakedown for a yacht designed for just one thing – to win.

Comanche : built to win

Think Laser dinghy or 49er morphed with rocket ship and you’ll get some idea of the qualities of_ Comanche_. At the yard, the racer was partially hidden behind two larger yachts with immaculate pedigrees, _Meteor_ and Artemis , but Comanche ’s square bow and carbon sprit jutted out beyond them, drawing the eye away from the varnished teak of her neighbours to a lean sailing machine intended to go as fast as possible powered only by the wind.

Sailing legend Ken Read, who also happens to be the president of North Sails, managed the project from day one for Jim Clark. Built at Hodgdon Yachts in Maine, US, Comanche had a hand-picked design and engineering team of international experts. It also had a construction schedule that raised eyebrows from the first day Jim Clark talked to Boat International about the radical project during the America’s Cup Superyacht Regatta in San Francisco, September 2013.

Comanche launched one year later and after stepping the mast in Newport, Rhode Island, and just two weeks of sailing trials, including a 600-mile qualifying sail to Charleston, South Carolina, the boat was packed aboard a cargo ship and sent to Australia to compete in the Sydney Hobart, which starts each year on Boxing Day.

Jim Clark and his Australian wife, Kristy Hinze-Clark, met the boat in Sydney for its short re-commissioning, Hinze-Clark racing aboard Comanche in a harbour tune-up event on 9 December 2014, where the yacht placed second despite poor conditions. The tabloids had a field-day, captioning photos with, “The supermodel and the supermaxi” and “She’s got legs” in reference to Kristy Hinze-Clark’s modelling career. These days she is a businesswoman, director for the Australian Nature Conservancy and the mother of two girls.

Boat International speaks exclusively with Comanche ‘s owner, Jim Clark

In our exclusive interview with Jim Clark, shortly before the race begins, we ask simply: “Why?”

“It’s a hobby,” he says, “I like the supermaxis, they are like Volvo 60s on steroids.” Jim Clark appears to be done with the J Class and is not a huge fan of what he calls the “multihull phase” of the America’s Cup with its reduced crew numbers. “The old sailing community is in monohulls and it’s nice to keep the guys engaged – there are lots of good sailors in the supermaxis and the guys are a lot of fun.”

When Jim Clark decided on a supermaxi, his plan was to go for line honours rather than wins on corrected time, and speed/distance records that could be set for yachts with human powered winches. “I don’t want any of that record stuff with an asterisk that says push-button winches,” Jim Clark scoffs. With this target, Jim Clark and Ken Read embarked on a “design experiment” for a yacht that could sail 30 knots or more on a broad reach. The experiment pushed them to some extreme stats, which Jim Clark says were run through CFD tests and simulations time and again.

“The 25-foot (7.6 metre) beam saves weight,” Ken Read says. “By going wider, we can have less weight in the keel to keep the same righting moment, thus we will go faster.” This thinking is carried over into the keel itself, which is solid stainless steel and not welded. With a 6.7 metre draught, the keel can be two tonnes lighter than a comparable keel on a boat with half the draught. The governing factor was the depth of Rhode Island’s Newport harbour where the boat will be based when not chasing records. “With the keel canted to one side we can just get to our berth,” Read says.

The downside to beam is increased surface drag when sailing flat in light air. “Being considerably wider than other boats, we need to be heeling at 11 to 13 degrees to present the same beam,” says Jim Clark. “In light air, we are at a disadvantage. When the wind cooperates, there is no question the boat is explosive.”

Hodgdon, the oldest boatbuilding business in the US, might seem like an odd choice if you don’t know that part of the yard’s annual output is high-tech military vessels and another part is carbon fibre limo tenders. In fact, Hodgdon is quite skilled at innovative construction techniques and when Tim Hodgdon agreed to build an oven to cook Comanche ’s carbon fibre hull, the deal was struck. The yard’s location also made it a good gathering stop for its far-flung team.

Is_ Comanche_ too powerful to handle?

Some critics have said Comanche is too extreme and too powerful to handle, but Jim Clark just laughs at this and suggests we “ask Kenny”.

“Yeah, it’s still an unknown but I’m not overly concerned,” he adds. “The hull is well baked and it’s been ultrasounded and X-rayed. There is a fuse in some of the loads so that nothing super bad can happen. But you can’t have a fuse in the rigging… Some of those termination points on the rig are kind of scary,” Jim Clark says.

That rig, which rises 47 metres above the waterline, is more than 50 per cent of the length aft from the bow, a surprising configuration but based on model testing for best all-around performance with the foil and appendages.

Innovation through design

Also innovative on _Comanche _are the daggerboards outboard of the mast and slightly forward of it. By canting the keel and putting the lee side daggerboard fully down, the boat generates enough lift to keep the angle of leeway to a minimum or crab up to a mark.

Comanche ‘s wide cockpit, full of grinder pedestals, hydraulic sail controls and sophisticated LED panels, gives the impression of a workhouse with modern instruments of torture. In a way, that is what they are. Grinders will work these six pedestals to turn the Harken winches. The only push-button winch on board is used to raise the mainsail. Once that sail is up the halyard is locked off and the winch isn’t used.

The winch pedestals are set slightly inboard and Read explains that when sailing on other 30 metre yachts he found that waves coming inboard at 30 knots or so would sweep the helmsman or winch grinders off their feet. “I have fetched up in the corner of the cockpit with pieces of steering wheel in my hands,” he says. Thus, by having 10 feet more beam than other 30 metre boats, there is space to put people and gear in a safer location with the added benefit of space for sails to be temporarily stored outboard of the pedestals on the high side.

Another interesting option is set right into the deck. Small black plugs cover screw holes that allow a dodger to cover both hatches. “On long distance races, we wanted the option to erect a dodger to keep the crew safe when on deck,” Read says. A slot in the cockpit sole just aft of the dodger allows the steering wheel to be moved forward, allowing the helmsman to stand behind the dodger for more protection.

Step below and you can see how much weight has been saved on Comanche . The single-skin carbon fibre hull and foam cored framing is fully exposed. It is mostly black with white non-skid patches. The forward end of the vessel is totally open, to store sails. Directly under the cockpit on either side are the crew berths, which keep the crew centre of gravity aft, close to the position they would be in when on deck; thus the trim of the yacht is not affected by off-watch crew moving around.

Directly under the cockpit sole is the navigator’s area with barely space to sit up. “The only requirement that navigator Stan Honey had was that we made the navigator’s seat 1.8 metres long so that he didn’t have to fight the crew for a berth,” Read says.

Talking to Read one gets a sense he is completely at ease with a project of this magnitude and the commitment it will take to sail Comanche to her potential. He has sailed around the world with several of his present crew and all had input into the new yacht’s design. That counts for a lot of experience, in addition to the French design team of Guillaume Verdier and VPLP (Marc Van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot-Prévost). “Without the designers we would probably have built a far more conservative boat,” Read says, “but with their help we have taken a leap forward.”

On deck, Comanche is also radically different. All halyards go to the masthead, where they are locked off in the same style that was pioneered in the 12 Metre Class. But on Comanche , tension is applied on the sail luff by hydraulic rams mounted on the foredeck and by pulling on the sail at the tack. “It reduces weight aloft,” Read explains, “and allows complete sail adjustment from the [safety of the] cockpit.”

Another advanced feature not often seen on smaller craft is that the jib tracks run transversely instead of fore and aft. “The clews for each headsail are in the same place and we might use the same sail for going hard to windward and when easing off onto a reach. With this arrangement all we need do is ease the track car to leeward when coming onto a reach. This enables us to keep power on without altering the shape of the sail when changing course relative to the wind,” Read notes.

The deck-stepped carbon fibre mast has swept spreaders to eliminate the need for adjustable running backstays. In some ways this is a disadvantage in that the masthead cannot be moved fore and aft when sailing up and downwind, but it eliminates the need for checkstays and runners. The masthead position is controlled with backstays to each corner of the transom and lines that are led into the mast from the backstays to control the rig bend.

“I started this boat thinking I could race it,” says Jim Clark wistfully. A degenerative condition in his ankles that makes standing uncomfortable has recently cropped up in his wrists as well. “They made a seat for me where I can drive it,” he says, but he opted out of the Sydney Hobart to make room for America’s Cup-winning skipper Jimmy Spithill to assist Read on the helm.

“I feel confident we’ll start getting line honours and next summer we’ll do the transatlantic race and see how that goes,” promises Jim Clark. “I’m optimistic.”

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• Digital Edition

How Comanche took more than a day off the transatlantic record

• Elaine Bunting
• November 15, 2016

The supermaxi Comanche broke the transatlantic record for monohulls (west to east) in July 2016, taking more than a day off the record. Here's how

No sailing record has a more storied history, or is harder to beat, than the transatlantic record. At a time when sailing records are being divided into smaller currencies and made with greater frequency, this is the big one. Ever since 1905, when Scots skipper Charlie Barr reduced it to 12 days in Wilson Marshall’s 56m/185ft three-masted schooner Atlantic , it has been a grand and famous prize.

On 28 July this year a new high water mark for this famous record was set when the 30.5m/100ft supermaxi Comanche crossed the finish line of the historic course from Ambrose Light, New York to The Lizard Point in Cornwall. She had finished a job for which she was built. The crew completed the 2,880-mile course (sailing 2,946 miles, only 66 miles farther than the Great Circle distance) in 5d 14h 21m and, in doing so, Jim Clark’s super-machine and her all-star crew bettered the previous record by well over a day.

See the full report from July on Yachting World.

The record Comanche broke is notoriously hard. That is why the last incumbent, Mari Cha IV , had hung onto it since 2003. Comanche , unlike the 42m/138ft Briand-designed schooner that preceded her, is an insanely powerful contraption with massive beam at the stern, long reverse sheer, a mast well abaft 50 per cent of the boat length, a towering, narrow mainsail and a long boom overhanging the stern. Comanche was built for raw speed with the wind abaft the beam.

But to break the record, the yacht needed mainly reaching conditions to take her all the way across, riding only one weather system. And it had to be the right kind of low pressure, not too fast and not one that would fizzle or be blocked before it reached Ireland.

“We needed a low pressure that was strong enough to make it all the way to the English Channel,” explains Stan Honey, the team’s navigator. “The question for Comanche was: could we find a system that was slow enough that she could stay in front of it?”

Honey went back to 2004, downloaded historical weather data in GRIB format and ran the boat’s polars starting every six hours from June through November for every year since. “What I found,” he says, “is that there was, on average, only two [suitable] systems per year.”

In June, Comanche returned from the Newport-Bermuda Race. Skipper Ken Read had his pick of 30 of the world’s best sailors, to be on a rolling rota over a three-month period, ready to go at a moment’s notice. Boat captain Casey Smith prepared Comanche . She had always been designed to sail in manual configuration, as world speed sailing records forbid the use of stored power, so the hydraulic pit winch and sail controls could instead be powered by rotary pumps.

One of the things Stan Honey had discovered was: “If you succeeded, it [would be on a weather pattern that] was reaching and running, so we took fewer sails and removed the daggerboards.” Taking the boards out saved 400kg. Upwind sails that would not play a part in record conditions were left ashore.

Twice the weather looked as if it was shaping up right. There were two near-misses when airline tickets were bought and crew were on their way to the airport only to find that the forecasts had changed. But in July a suitable weather window appeared, and continued to improve. This was a low that was travelling slowly by virtue of an old warm front left over and a weak leftover low on the north-west edge of the Azores High.

At the right speed for Comanche , and with a low probability of overtaking her, it could potentially carry her on south-westerlies all the way. It was Code Green.

Her crew headed out from New York late in the evening of 22 July. After all the planning – six long years from concept to this point – Ken Read was not aboard. He had a prior commitment to commentate at the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series Portsmouth. The team decided to go ahead. “It was helpful for us all to know how rare this weather was,” says Stan Honey.

The first few nights at sea were difficult and there were times when the record hung in the balance. First, Comanche had to negotiate a line of thunderstorms. Behind these the wind fell light and they slowed. A hold up of an hour or two may not seem that critical, but it was worrying for the crew because it increased the odds that they might fall off the back of the low pressure system. Typically, this is how records fail: a breakage or some other delay kicks you out the back door.

But past that the boat was, Casey Smith remembers, “ripping along”. They were doing 550-mile days; they were blasting. Though it was mainly grey and overcast, that did not dampen the mood on board. True to the forecast, the sailing was, Smith says, ideal.

There were 17 crew on board, the fewest Comanche had ever raced with. Since conditions were not expected to vary greatly, they weren’t going to be doing many sail changes. Smith remembers doing only five sail changes during the record. “Normally we might do that in a day,” he says.

The only sails used apart from the main were the A3, Comanche’s VMG-style running sail, up “90 per cent of the time” and the FRO, or fractional reaching Code 0.

Comanche’s actual track is in black. The theoretical optimum route from the GFS HO weather analysis is in blue.

Coming on home

At times there was fog, and the radar and AIS watch was intensified. “Fog is always the case with transatlantic records, as you’re doing it in the warm sector,” says Stan Honey. “It’s all grey and every bone in your body tells you you are going to get pasted, but because you are travelling along with it you don’t.”

When the record had its hairy moments, it was because the breeze faded. “Once we cleared out of the top of Newfoundland and through the ice areas that was our lightest period of the race, 15-18 knots,” says Smith. “We had to be very careful. But we were still doing 18-20 knots [of boat speed] and the breeze soon built up.”

But was it rough? Smith just laughs. “Maybe we are going to have to tell people we had 5m seas. No, it was as calm as I’ve seen the Atlantic. We wouldn’t have seen a swell over 2m. Although between the warm and cold front we had lousy visibility, the wonderful thing is that you get flat water and because you are moving with the system seas are just starting to build.” He thinks the maximum wave height was even less. “Never more than 1.5m,” he declares.

“It seemed to be that we were so well lined up on the system that we’d advance to run out of wind down to below 20 knots and then the wind would slowly build up and then run out. That’s how much on the front edge of the system we were. We’d poke out of it and come back in,” says Smith. “ But in flat water and breeze, doing 500+ mile days, we were just coming on home.”

A big, hollow drum

It never got especially cold on board. According to Casey Smith some of the crew did not wear boots at any point on the way across, only deck shoes. But the water temperature dropped to 9°C so perhaps that is merely a measure of their hardiness. Honey laughs that he knows a Kiwi sailor who wore Crocs rounding Cape Horn – and it’s not an indication of fair weather.

On the other hand, the safety routines aboard were stringent. Crew had AIS beacons, strobes, always wore harnesses and tethers, and were clipped on “the whole time. No one comes on deck without a harness or lifejacket,” says Smith.

Apart from sandwiches for the first day, food was all freeze-dried. There was “not a huge amount of joking; it was a level, calm group and super-professional. Everyone was very focused,” says Smith. But on board it was noisy: the boat is a big, hollow carbon drum. And it’s wet, although the worst of the water and wind was kept off the driver and trimmers by an offshore dodger.

Coming into the English Channel in low, grey cloud and fog, Comanche ’s crew were well ahead of the record. The ideal had been to take as much as a day off Mari Cha ’s record, but when they fizzed past Lizard Point, not stopping, but carrying on to the Solent, they had improved the benchmark time by 1d 3h 31m. They had done the whole Atlantic, just shy of 3,000 miles, at an average speed of 21.44 knots.

Transatlantic by numbers

Record course: Ambrose Light to The Lizard, leaving Nantucket Shoal and Cape Race to port

Great Circle distance: 2,880 miles

Distance sailed: 2,946 miles

Average speed on theoretical course: 21.44 knots

Average speed on actual course: 21.93 knots

Peak GPS speed over ground: 21.5 knots

Average wind: 21.5 knots (TWS)

Average true wind angel: 130.5°

Peak true wind speed (TWS): 32.2 knots (ten-second average)

Could it be bettered?

As soon as a record has been broken it’s customary to ask if it could be bettered, and for Comanche that is a valid question. This is a yacht capable of even more. “For sure,” is Casey Smith’s judgement. “We had periods of light wind, below 15 knots for 24 hours, and if we had had even five more knots of wind we would have taken another 12 hours off the record.

“There is no reason why you wouldn’t have another go.” Stan Honey agrees, but with caveats. “If we had had a somewhat faster system we could easily take another ten hours off the record. But then it is kind of like playing with fire: if you have a system you can barely keep up with, it is a low probability bet. It might take two or three attempts.

“These records are the most frustrating for us. The crew hates it because it feels as if the world is passing them by; the navigator hates it because he’s working every day, and the owner hates it because it’s costing a lot of money!”

Which is why Comanche ’s Atlantic record is so colossal: complete success at their first shot. “This was as good as it gets,” Honey says. “It’s to the credit of Ken Read and the owner, and it’s a real honour to sail with these guys. They really are an extraordinary group; some of the best sailors in the world. You look around and everyone is just really happy to be sailing with each other.”

Jim Clark and his wife, Kristy Hinze Clark, were not aboard for this record, but when they finished Clark said: “ Comanche was built to break ocean records and the guys have once again powered our fantastic fat-bottomed girl to another title. I am so proud of the entire team and everyone involved in the entire programme from top to bottom. Kristy and I are over the moon.”

Comanche transatlantic crew: a who’s who of sailing

Casey Smith (AUS), boat captain Stan Honey (USA), navigator Tony Mutter (NZL), trimmer Dirk de Ridder (NED), main trimmer Chris Maxted (AUS), boat crew Jon von Schwarz (USA), grinder Juggy Clougher (AUS), bow Julien Cressant (FRA), pit Nick Dana (USA), bow Pablo Arrarte (ESP), runners Pepe Ribes (ESP), bow Peter van Niekerk (NED), trimmer Phil Harmer (AUS), grinder Richard Clarke (CAN), runners Robert Greenhalgh (GBR), main trimmer Shannon Falcone (ATG), grinder Yann Riou (FRA), media

Comanche owner a late convert to the ocean

Jim clark, the owner of new supermaxi and strong sydney to hobart line honours chance comanche, grew up a long way from the ocean..

He wants to rule the waves now, but Comanche owner Jim Clark started life a long way from the ocean. (AAP)

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Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2024

Andoo Comanche

John ‘Herman’ Winning Jr has chartered the Sydney Hobart record holder, Comanche . In their first hit out, Winning took Line Honours from Black Jack in the fluky 2022 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race. She took Line Honours in just under 20 hours and won the inaugural 260nm Tollgate Islands Race. Herman has prefixed the boat’s name with ‘Andoo’ for Andoo Products, which partners with his Appliances Online. This is the boat to beat for Line Honours.

American Jim Clark and Aussie wife Kristy bought brand new Comanche for her first Rolex Sydney Hobart in 2014 and finished 49 mins behind Line Honours victor, Wild Oats XI , ahead of her Line Honours victory in 2015 after scoring Line Honours in the light and fluky 2015 Rolex Fastnet Race. She also smashed the 2225 nautical mile Transpac monohull record in 2017. Jim Cooney and Samantha Grant bought her just prior to the 2017 Rolex Sydney Hobart and as LDV Comanche , she took Line Honours and the race record after a protest against Wild Oats XI . In 2018, Comanche was pipped for second over the Rolex Sydney Hobart finish line by Black Jack after a race-long battle between the four 100-footers, won by Wild Oats XI . Cooney last took her to Hobart in 2019 and took Line Honours after doing the same in the 2019 Transpac Race.

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