Proafile v5.0 | Updated: Jul 28, 2010

Catamarans News

The Cat Came Back

Posted by on 03/05 at 10:34 AM
Via the Boat Design Forum: Tornado sailors, Steve Lohmayer and Jamie Livingston, going under the team name of Lumpy and Bumpy, have won the annual Watertribe Everglades Challenge in a record time of just under 36 hours.

The Everglades Challenge is a 300+ mile adventure racing event that runs from Tampa Bay's Ft. DeSoto beach to Key Largo. The previous record for the event was set last year with a time of two days, 8 hours, 56 minutes by a 22 foot, double-handed skiff.

Lohmayer and Livingston passed fellow multihuller, Randy Smyth, about two thirds of the way down the course, when his trimaran suffered an unknown breakage, forcing Smyth to retire. Randy then found transportation to the finish line to greet the Tornado team upon their victorious arrival.

It's nice to see a multihull take the cup of this spectacularly challenging race. The Tornado class catamaran is (by multihull standards) an ancient design, from the drawing board of Rod MacAlpine-Downie Jr. 20' x 10' x 233 sq. ft. SA, the boat is one of those rare creations that somehow seems greater than the sum of its parts. A perennial Olympic class, the cat was recently eliminated - causing great dismay among multihull fans.

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