Next Saturday, 21 of the most beautiful and fastest yachts of our time will start the hunt for a record of the century. The Rolex Transatlantic Challenge aims to undercut the record for crossing the ocean from west to east - it has been in existence since 1905. This makes it the oldest record in sailing and probably the oldest in world sport.
It is a colorful conglomerate, from the 230-foot three-mast clipper to the 70-foot Swan, which sets out to undercut the time of the legendary schooner "Atlantic": 12 days, 5 hours, 1 minute, 19 seconds.
The YACHT introduces all participants in the race from New York to the south coast of England - and has researched the exciting history of this record for a current occasion. Did you know, for example, that the first Atlantic regatt in 1866 was simply the result of a comparatively insane bet among very rich young men? Three yachts then started to race across the ocean - nobody had dared that before, 300 miles was the longest distance sailed in the competition to date.
The regatta, around which the largest sports bet of the entire century developed in the US, turned into a maritime epic with all the ingredients: pioneering achievements, suffering, heroic deeds, tragedies, immeasurable luxury, tough seamanship. It cast a spell over large parts of the country. The time sailed at the time by the victorious gaff rig schooner "Henrietta", skipped by a newspaper heir, lasted 39 years - until that race in 1905, in which the record, which is now to be improved, was set. This went back to an initiative of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who urgently needed a success at sea, mainly for political reasons. To do this, he tricked the British tea baron Sir Thomas Lipton and challenged the richest and most powerful men in the United States to compete on the Atlantic
You can find the exciting history of this ocean race in the new YACHT (from Wednesday at the kiosk).
The Internet address www.nyyc.org provides information on the attempt to record a record, which will begin on the weekend.