crew of comanche yacht

Comanche Story: Across the Ocean in a Work Week

Shattering the transatlantic sailing record.

Even the most daunting world records are meant to be broken … eventually. For elite navigator Stan Honey and a crew of sailing all-stars, beating the prestigious monohull transatlantic sailing record was the ultimate accomplishment. And it was no easy feat. On July 22, 2016, the Comanche — a custom-built, 100-foot racing yacht — set sail from New York to the southern tip of England.

Precisely five days, 14 hours, 21 minutes and 25 seconds later, the Comanche’s crew shattered the world record … by more than a day.

Brave the high seas as we set sail on one of the most amazing and inspiring journeys ever to take place on film.

A Great Big Film dedicated to Comanche, made in partnership with Land Rover ( http://www.landroverusa.com/vehicles/… ).

About Comanche

Comanche is a 100 ft (33 m) maxi yacht. She was designed in France by VPLP and Guillaume Verdier and built in the United States by Hodgdon Yachts for Dr. James H. Clark and christened as  Comanche . 

Comanche  holds the 24-hour sailing record for monohulls, covering 618 nm, for an average of 25.75 knots or 47.69 kmh/h. The boat won line honours in the 2015 Fastnet race and the 2015 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, under the leadership of skipper Ken Read. In 2017,  Comanche  set a new Transpac record, covering 484.1 nmi in 24 hours, for an average speed of 20.2 knots (37.4 km/h). In 2019, under navigator Stan Honey, the yacht won the 2225-mile 50th Transpacific Yacht Race, with a time of 5 days 11 hours 14 minutes 05 seconds.  Comanche  won the 2017 Sydney to Hobart yacht race, with a time of 1 day 9 hours 15 minutes 24 seconds, a record that still stands today.

At 5 days 14 hours 21 minutes 25 seconds, the sailing yacht holds the Monohull Transatlantic sailing record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, which they achieved on July 28, 2016.

In December 2017, was sold to Australian Jim Cooney, and was renamed to LDV Comanche, as part of a one-time sponsorship from SAIC Maxus Automotive Co’s  LDV  brand. The yacht later returned to its original, unsponsored title of Comanche. Under this name it won the Sydney-Hobart race again in 2019 in 1 day 18 hours and 30 minutes.

Soon after the completion of the 2019 Sydney-Hobart race, Comanche was reportedly sold to a Russian interest group. [7]  Details of the sale have not been disclosed as of yet.

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Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2023

This is possibly one of the most talked about entries for this 70th Anniversary Race. This new 100-foot supermaxi is designed by Verdier Yacht Design & Vplp to push the boundaries of technology with the ultimate goal of taking line honours this year. The boat is the culmination of a two-year project. Built at Hodgdon Yachts in Maine, Comanche was sailed for the first time on October 13 and will be spiced with Australian flavour partly because her co-owner is Kristy Hinze-Clark, a former supermodel from Australia married to Jim Clark. Her mainsail also reflects Comanche’s Australian connection, as does Aussie crew; boat captain Casey Smith, Ryan Godrey in the pit and Chris Maxted “floating”.

Other big names are Stan Honey (navigator) and New Zealand’s Kevin Halrap on tactics. Comanche is skippered by renowned US sailor Ken Read with 21 international crew. Jim Clark, an American entrepreneur and computer scientist, founded several prominent Silicon Valley technology companies, such as Silicon Graphics Inc. and Netscape Communications Corporation.

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Yachting World

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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

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John sailed the Sydney to Hobart yacht race with his father. Now he’s passing on the tradition to his sons

John Townley and his two sons will sail the 2023 Sydney to Hobart yacht race – 35 years after he first sailed it with his father

To John Townley, this year’s Sydney to Hobart race means so much more than just a chance to see his new boat in action.

This year, 35 years after he first sailed the race with his father, as a 16-year-old, he is now taking his two sons, 20-year-old Max and 18-year-old Matthew.

“I always hoped I would be able to take them on a race, the way my father did, and pass on everything I learned from that,” he said.

“I think it is paramount boys have a healthy relationship with their fathers, or any elders in their community. It’s one of the most important relationships we have, and enables them to be good people who treat people well.”

It is the 78th edition of the race, which is due to start at 1pm on Boxing Day, with 103 yachts expected to compete.

Townley, who is a commercial pilot for Jetstar, has raced the Sydney to Hobart five times.

“It has been nearly 25 years since my last race, and I am really excited about it this year. I’ve talked to my sons about my experiences sailing and they’ve been listening for years, but finally they can get some first-hand experience.

“It was a memorable thing from my past and I am just extremely excited to share it now with my boys.”

Townley will be racing alongside some of his longtime friends – Sam Ibbott, who is also bringing his son, and Simon Wilcox.

He bought his new boat, a Buizen 48, in Sydney about six months ago, and intended to take it home to Hobart on his own.

But seeing an opportunity, he hatched a plan to enter it into the race, to honour his father’s legacy, and to teach his sons some life lessons.

“I only got into sailing because of my father’s interest. In fact, he was in the middle of a race when I was born, and they had to get a rescue boat out to him so he could get to the hospital.

“But I am stoked to pass on the resilience I learned from racing,” Townley continued.

“What I learned was to just get on with the job at hand, no matter how bad it gets. Life isn’t always easy, and you need to find the strength and character to get you through the tough times.

“Boys need to feel listened to, and granted responsibility, and I think that builds the confidence needed in life.”

Just like his father in his first race, Matthew is the youngest person in the race this year, and said he felt ready to sail offshore alongside his father.

“Its definitely special, doing this with my dad and my brother. And with our crew, I’m not too nervous about it, I am excited to see how it goes.”

Matthew believes sailing is a part of his family and took a keen interest in it from a young age.

“Our whole family life revolves around water and water activities, including surfing and sailing, and it’s been a big part of my dad’s life and he passed that on to me,” he said. “My whole passion for sailing comes from him.”

And while the crew don’t expect to be competitive this year, Matthew said he was keen to eventually join a competitive team and win the race.

“Winning is definitely something I’d want to do in the future, or to even join a competitive team. I am not sure how we will place this year but we will be trying to beat some boats.”

The boat was originally called Manutai, which means ocean bird, but is now called Hansen Tasmania, due to their sponsorship agreement with Hansen Orchards.

The second in command, Sam Ibbott, is bringing his son, Archer, along as well.

“This is much more in the spirit of the race, in that the first race was a cruise between friends, and they turned that into a race, which is sort of what we are doing,” he said.

“We’re taking the professionalism back out of it. We are all competent sailors, but we don’t have a big budget. We’re going on a family boat to try and share the experience.”

Ibbott said families doing the race together was not rare in the Sydney to Hobart, because it built stronger bonds and connections between parents and their children.

“The reason people do it is because some of these bonds forged in adversity can be quite strong.

“It’s a bit different to the day-to-day living, of asking your children to pick up socks or whatnot. It’s an opportunity to treat them as equals, as adults.”

He said the family dynamics on a boat made for a unique experience, and that he hoped his son and the other young men on the boat would benefit from the shared experience.

“They say it takes a village to raise a child, but in this instance it could be a crew.

“Just like in everyday life, we are trying to raise our children together. This is an opportunity to see some role models in action. We are all part of our village.”

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COMANCHE is a 30.45 m Sail Yacht, built in the United States of America by Hodgdon and delivered in 2014.

She has a gross tonnage of 72.0 GT and a 8.0 m beam.

She was designed by VPLP Design , who has designed 14 other superyachts in the BOAT Pro database.

The naval architecture was developed by Guillaume Verdier and VPLP Design (17 other superyachts architected) - she is built with a Carbon Fibre deck, a Carbon Fibre hull, and Carbon Fibre superstructure.

COMANCHE is one of 387 sailing yachts in the 30-35m size range.

COMANCHE is currently sailing under the Cayman Islands flag, the 2nd most popular flag state for superyachts with a total of 1366 yachts registered. She is known to be an active superyacht and has most recently been spotted cruising near Australia. For more information regarding COMANCHE's movements, find out more about BOAT Pro AIS .

Specifications

• Name: COMANCHE
• Yacht Type: Sail Yacht
• Yacht Subtype: Racing Yacht
• Builder: Hodgdon
• Naval Architect: Guillaume Verdier , VPLP Design
• Exterior Designer: VPLP Design
• Refits: 2023-09-03,2021-12-26,2021-10-15,2021-06-29,2023-08-03,2022-08-02,2019-10-09

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Andoo Comanche set for Sydney to Hobart line honours defence but skipper aware of recent challenges

Sport Andoo Comanche set for Sydney to Hobart line honours defence but skipper aware of recent challenges

Andoo Comanche's crew are vowing to stay on their toes as they defend their Sydney to Hobart line honours title, lest they repeat a serious crash that sent two sailors to hospital.

Comanche has blitzed through preparations for this year's Hobart, where she will be one of four 100-foot (30.5-metre) supermaxis jostling to reach Constitution Dock the quickest.

Comanche holds the line-honours record and is arguably the fastest monohull in the world, crossing the line first at all four events of this year's Sydney Blue Water Pointscore Series thus far.

But Comanche's strength, her unmatched power, can be her greatest weakness, a point reiterated to skipper John Winning Jr and his crew earlier this year.

Sailing offshore near the site of another recent line honours victory, the Brisbane to Hamilton Island, the boat ran aground under motor.

Comanche only briefly scraped the bottom of her hull in the shallow water, but it was enough to send a jolt across the huge vessel.

The impact sent crew member Phil Jameson careering into the companionway, landing head-first and cracking his skull open.

"He was unconscious," Winning said.

"He doesn't have any recollections of the hours in between but we were having conversations with him and he doesn't remember any of that."

Fellow crew member Julien Cressant suffered a leg injury so painful he was struggling to walk.

"A couple of really good men got seriously injured, and they're probably two of the toughest blokes on the boat," Winning said.

"It shows you the tiniest thing on this thing, with the loads and the size and the weight of it, it can really hurt you if you get something wrong, and it did."

Both men have since recovered and are committed to joining Winning aboard Comanche from December 26.

"It's a good warning sign for us to always be on our toes," Winning said.

"The same thing can happen if you do anything wrong. It will come back and bite, you this boat. It's not forgiving."

Winning and his crew will spend the next month preparing for and contesting the Cabbage Tree Island race and Big Boat Challenge, as well as ironing out any remaining issues with their boat.

Winning is remaining alert to any mechanical issues after the engine and hydraulics failed during the Bird Island Race earlier this month.

"It was over an hour, maybe two or three hours, before they got it fixed," Winning said.

"We still won the race on line honours but we were lucky there were no other 100 footers or we might've had a bit on our hands to win that.

"The fact that in the last race we had a major problem is a little concerning.

"There's still a long way to go [until the Sydney to Hobart race] but we want to know what our back-up plans are for those situations."

It would be a brave punter who bet against Comanche once those issues were ironed out.

Winning is confident that in the right conditions, his team can break the line honours record — 1 day, 9 hours and 15 minutes — Comanche set in 2017.

"We want it windy, aiming at the finish line and as flat as possible on the water and as downwind as possible," Winning said.

"If we got the same conditions as 2017, we would like to think that as a crew, with the fact we've got new sail packaging and everything, we're every shot in beating that record."

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