Fast Company

Records are made to be broken. And these days, sailing records are shattering faster than plates at a Greek wedding — everywhere but locally. In compiling our every-five-years look at sailing speed records near and far, we note that everything from round-the-world to transatlantic to fastest ‘any craft’ (a sailboarder in the French trench hit 49.09 knots just a week ago) have all tumbled in just the last few years, while only two local sailing record have fallen in — gasp — the last 10 years! A tip of the hat in that direction to Mark Jones’ TP 52 Flash, which set the new elapsed time record for the Spinnaker Cup (San Francisco to Monterey) in 2004, and Peter Stoneberg’s chartered ProSail 40 cat Tuki, which set a new Jazz Cup record in 2005.

Yes, we know it hasn’t been that windy for some local events in the last few years — and no, we haven’t received updates or confirmation for every local event yet. But from the look of things so far, the record setters of the mid-1990s still rule the Bay — boats like Serge Pond’s 32-ft catamaran Rocket 88 (fastest Silver Eagle [‘95], Delta Ditch Run [’98] and Three Bridge Fiasco [‘96]), Tom Blackaller’s old ProSail 40 Tom Cat — sailed by Zan Drejes and Jack Halterman — (Doublehanded Farallones multihull and overall record, set in ’92), Paul Simonsen’s SC 70 Mongoose (Doublehanded Farallones monohull record, also in ‘92), Steve Fossett’s 60-ft trimaran Lakota (‘97 Windjammers) . . . and — hold on to your wizard hats — Merlin still holds the monohull Windjammers record, which she set under Donn Campion in 1983. That’s 25 years, folks!

Here’s hoping 2008 is a windy year for all you local need-for-speed freaks. For a complete list of the current elapsed time marks up for grabs, check out the April issue of Latitude 38.