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HODGDON LUXURY TENDERS 🛥 Hodgdon celebrates 204 years of building boats in the State of Maine. @hodgdonyachts ⛵ The Luxury District Club 2021 Memberships 💎 Follow Your Showcase of Dreams 🎯 Learn more! Link in Bio @LuxuryDistricts 🇺🇸 #LuxuryDistrict #Hodgdon #HodgdonYachts #LuxuryTender #LuxuryYacht #Boating #Yachting #YachtBroker #YachtBuilder #Sailing (at Hodgdon Yachts) https://www.instagram.com/p/CDkkdGBD2fK/?igshid=1tcg9x7c8mem5

[maineboats-blog]

Hodgdon launches super-fast ocean racer

  One of the most high-tech yachts ever built in this country was launched Saturday, Sept. 27 by Hodgdon Yachts in East Boothbay.

Built for Internet entrepreneur Jim Clark, the sleek carbon fiber ocean racer named Comanche is designed to break monohull sailing records. About 100 feet long and 23 feet wide, the boat looks like a giant surfboard, with a wide, flat transom and stubby bow. When it is rigged, mast will sit well aft and the transom will act as the traveller for the boom, explained Kimo Worthington, a leader on Clark’s ocean racing team who was on hand for Saturday’s launch.

That and “a lot of other little things,” will help make the boat very, very fast, said Worthington. “Just look at it. It’s a machine,” he said proudly.

In order to save weight, as well as to qualify the boat for manual sailing records, the boat’s sails and dagger boards will be controlled by manually powered hydraulics. Comanche will be sailed by a crew of 20, Worthington said.

Worthington, whose competitive sailing experience includes six America’s Cups and four Volvo round-the-world ocean races, works for North Sails President Ken Read, who will be Comanche’s skipper. He was part of the team that picked Hodgdon for the job.

“This is a great facility,” Worthington said. “This was a logical choice for building a boat of this size. Plus, it was important to us to have it built in the United States.”

Hodgdon, which has been building boats in East Boothbay for 200 years, has worked with carbon fiber on past projects, including a prototype of a fast patrol boat for the U.S. military.  The yard has been on the cutting edge for some time. Eleven years ago almost to the day, the yard launched Scheherazade, a 154-foot ketch, which at the time was the largest cold-molded yacht ever built.

In addition to Hodgdon employees, the crew building the boat included about 10 people from Cianbro and 20 from Clark’s own team, said Hodgdon Director of Human Resources Neal Williamson. Cianbro became involved because of the company’s experience working with high-tech carbon fiber.

The boat was designed by French firms Guillaume Verdier and VPLP.

“There is a great deal of pride in this,” Williamson said of the project. “The team did a great job getting this done in such a short time.”

Members of Clark’s ocean-racing team planned to tow the hull to Newport, Rhode Island on Sunday. There they will add the mast, which was built in New Zealand, as well as the 22-foot deep canting keel and two dagger boards, all of which were built in Italy.

Saturday’s splashing of the hull is what is called a technical launch. The formal launching ceremony won’t take place until later this fall when the boat is fully rigged.

Plans call for trials in October off Newport, before the boat is sailed to Charleston, South Carolina, where it will be packed into a shipping container and sent off to Australia, Worthington said. Clark plans to race Comanche in the Sydney-Hobart Race, which starts just after Christmas.

Clark, who started Netscape, has owned a number of cutting edge yachts over the years. He decided to build this one last year after seeing a friend’s ocean-racing 100-footer, Worthington said.

The tight schedule meant Hodgdon has to finish the hull in just 12 months — usually a project like this takes 18 months or more.