The "World's Fastest Sailboat"?
The plan is simple: to create a monohull that will destroy every sailing record in existence.
We saw Vlad Murnikov's drawings. We heard Cam Lewis was going to be skipper. We witnessed the build underway at Lyman-Morse Boatbuilding. But we didn't know for sure if the Speed Dream racing project would ever really take off, or if it would be another yacht designer's dream stuck on a drawing board or abandoned halfway through construction.
Over two days of testing in Rockland Harbor, Maine, we watched firsthand as the Speed Dream became reality. With a southerly wind blowing across Rockland Harbor at about 5 knots, the 27-footer, designed to be a prototype for a much larger model, sailed straight off the dock at Journey's End Marina on the yacht's first official test sail. With Lewis on the tiller and two crew from Lyman-Morse aboard, Speed Dream made its way past the granite wharfs and Coast Guard station before tacking and heading out into Rockland Harbor. Even in such light conditions, the jet-black, carbon-fiber creation appeared to easily be hitting seven or eight knots.
"Does it look like you expected it to?" I asked Murnikov.
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