Investment banker Simon McKeon spends most of his time cutting deals and, as head of Australia’s Takeovers Panel, ruling on merger disputes. But next month he will have just one transaction on his mind: getting the most out of 20 mile-per-hour winds.
The 49-year-old executive director of Macquarie Bank is preparing for another assault on the world speed record for sailing, in the waters off Sandy Point, east of Melbourne. He and his teammates, Tim Daddo and Lindsay Cunningham, hope to push their 34-foot, 440-pound craft beyond the elusive 50-knot -- 57.5 mph -- barrier, or at least to beat the current record of 48.7 knots.
The World Sailing Speed Record Council deems the qualifying top speed to be the average over a 500-meter course. Sailors select their locations and request the council’s approval. Any type of watercraft can be used, as long as it’s propelled solely by wind.
Indeed, McKeon’s boat, Macquarie Innovation, resembles less a yacht than the tail of an airplane. Last year McKeon and Daddo walked away from a high-speed crash thanks to a cockpit designed to eject passengers during impact. Their boat all but disintegrated, however, and Cunningham, the crew’s engineer, had to redesign and rebuild it. The sailors plan to be a bit more cautious this time.
“It’s not just a game of raw power,” points out McKeon. “It’s a matter of controllability. At the end of the day, it is a scientific project, not a yacht race.”
Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean the crew isn’t competitive. For more than a decade, McKeon, Daddo and Cunningham held the world record -- 46.52 knots -- until it was wrested away in November 2004 by Irish windsurfer Finian Maynard, who reached 46.83 knots on a sailboard. (Six months later Maynard bettered his own time and set the current mark.)
“That was a rude shock,” McKeon says. “We want to get the record back.”
