Bermuda Challenge, can a monohull win?

Rats. I got excited that an accomplished-sounding guy named Chris Fertig had departed New York Harbor yesterday morning in an attempt at the Bermuda Challenge. He hoped to beat the current speed champ “while using less fuel and producing less engine emissions.” But the Spot tracking page for TDI Clean Diesel indicates that he hung a hard right for home at around eight last night. The boat is still moving right along, so there’s no sign of gear failure, but my calculations show an average speed of only 28 knots for the first 290 miles, and he’d been hoping for 35. Plus his track had started zig-zagging a bit suggesting a contentious sea state despite the Statement Marine’s “shock mitigating suspension system.” Giving up on a sure-to-lose attempt might have been my decision too! But let’s discuss the Challenge and some of Fertig’s gear anyway…

The Bermuda Challenge was purportedly dreamt up in a bar by the good and eclectic writer David Seidman, then editor of Boating. The idea was to see if a powerboat under 40 feet using rapidly improving hull and propulsion technology could handle 673 nautical miles of open ocean at speed, and so far only power catamarans have held the record, which currently stands at 22 hours and 23 minutes. There does seem to be another monohull, a Contender 37 called Team Big Dog, that is either planning to attempt the challenge or already did but forget to note the results on their web site.
   A lot of TDI Clean Diesel’s technology is at least somewhat familiar, like the Cummins Mercruiser Diesel Axius sterndrives, the FLIR thermal camera, and the Simrad electronics. But David Clark marine intercoms are little known beyond military and “go fast” boats. And they sound darn serious: A nearly infinite number of headsets with full duplex intercom, a 300 foot wireless range, and interfaces for HF, VHF, and UHF radios.

TDI Clean Diesel just tied up in Rehoboth Beach, Deleware, which means that Chris Fertig and crew ran about 550 miles of ocean in a bit over 24 hours. The Bermuda Challenge record remains unbroken, but that’s a heck of a gear test.