| cwfdive |
08-08-2013 01:06 PM |
New York City to Bermuda world record attempt
After months of planning, testing and tweaking, Tyson and I are finally ready to make another run to Bermuda in the hopes of beating Fabio Buzzi’s time and re-claiming the Bermuda Challenge world record. You may recall we broke the 10 year old NYC to Bermuda endurance record last August 4th and 5th in a Mercury TDI diesel powered 37 Statement center console. Roughly two months later, Fabio Buzzi broke our record by 4 hours in a boat designed and built for the Italian Special Forces, establishing the new Bermuda Challenge record at 17 hours, 6 minutes with an average speed over the 780 mile, open ocean course of 45.6mph.
In order to be better positioned to be able to make a run at Fabio’s extremely impressive time, our new company, Offshore Endurance, has teamed with Skater, Cummins and Simrad to bring the Bermuda Challenge world record back to the US while demonstrating the capabilities of US high-performance marine boat, engine and electronics technology.
We will be running a carbon/kevlar 399 Skater V-hull, powered by 480HP Cummins QSBs, 2 speed ZF transmissions and Arneson Surface drives. The Bermuda Challenge isn’t like the Shootout. It doesn’t matter how fast you can go, what matters more is how long you can go fast and 780 miles is quite a poke! The boat has the speed and range to cruise in the 70’s for 800 miles, assuming no mechanical issues. If we can take the pounding and have limited mechanical and/or weather issues, we think we have a shot at bringing back the record – only time will tell!
We will be updating OSO as well as our website www.offshoreendurance.com and our Facebook page offshoreendurance to keep everyone in the loop as we wait for the required weather window to drop the throttles and head East. The boat will be equipped with a Delorme tracker so you can follow along as well as a hardened live satellite streaming video system which will hopefully survive the pounding this time and allow you to watch us as we pound our way east. The live video and tracker feeds will be viewable on Boating Magazine’s Bermuda Challenge webpage: www.boatingmag.com/bermudachallenge.
Thanks for everyone’s support and we will keep you updated as we continue to monitor the weather for a potential window to make our run! |
