owner of comanche yacht

Jim Cooney buys Comanche – the super maxi will now call Australia home

One of the favourites to take line honours in the 2017 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, LDV Comanche, was purchased today (14 December 2017) by Sydney’s Jim Cooney from its American owner Jim Clark, making the super maxi yacht an Australian owned and skippered entry when it starts the Boxing Day classic.

“LDV Comanche is a truly awe-inspiring yacht, and the chance to race to Hobart, alongside my children Julia and James with a world class crew, is a once in a lifetime opportunity too good to pass up. I started ocean racing 30 years ago and we have raced as a family in many parts of the world for 12 years, but this is an incredible opportunity for us to challenge for the world’s toughest blue water classic,” says Jim Cooney, who finished sixth on line in last year’s race at the helm of his Volvo 70 ‘Maserati’ and campaigned his iconic maxi Brindabella for seven years before that.

“This year competition is fierce, with the strongest line up of super maxis ever seen in one race. Depending on conditions, any of the 100 footers could take line honours, it threatens be one of the best races in the history of the event,” Cooney stated today.

Jim Cooney is the Chairman and majority shareholder of TCI Renewables, a professional wind energy development company headquartered in Oxford, UK. Jim is a Chartered Engineer who co-founded TCI in Australia in 1996 and successfully developed the business to span the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and the United States. He is an accomplished industry leader in renewable energy, specialising in wind energy, and under his direction TCI Renewables has developed some of the largest wind farms in the UK.  In 2005 Jim was honoured with the prestigious Ernst & Young Australian Entrepreneur of the Year.  He holds degrees from the University of Sydney, University of London and Imperial College, London.

LDV Comanche will continue to carry the colours of the Chinese vehicle manufacturer LDV, which is using the yacht and the race as part of the launch of  its new LDV T60 Ute.

The crew on LDV Comanche reads like a who’s who of the sailing world and following the change in ownership, will gain some new names. As well as Jim Cooney, the crew will now include Jim’s son and daughter Julia and James Cooney alongside Waratah Jeremy Tilse.

The stellar crew includes three time America’s cup winner and 2015 Rolex Sydney Hobart Winner Jimmy Spithill (Australia); eleven time winner of the Transpac race and round the world race winner Stan Honey (USA); round the world race winner Brad Jackson (New Zealand); Olympic and round the world sailor Dirk de Ridder (Netherlands); multiple America’s Cup sailor and Rolex Sydney Hobart winner Warwick Fleury (New Zealand); America’s Cup sailor, Nick Burridge (New Zealand); Olympic, America’s Cup and round the world sailor Shannon Falcone (UK); Rolex Sydney Hobart race winner on Comanche, John Von Schwarz (USA); six time round the world racer and seven time America’s Cup competitor, Tony ‘Trae’ Rae (New Zealand); Sydney Hobart winner on board Comanche and the sport’s world renowned ‘Mr Fixit’, Casey Smith (Australia); Extreme sailing expert Stuart Pollard (Australia); round the world sailor Justin Slattery (Ireland); Rolex Sydney Hobart winner on Comanche Keats Keeley (USA); round the world sailor David Rolfe (Australia); and project manager Tim Hackett who has managed some of the leading teams around the world.

Launched as ‘Comanche’, and now called ‘LDV Comanche’ for the 2017 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race, the 100 foot maxi racing yacht holds a remarkable list of records, all of which show her to be the ideal yacht for the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race. The yacht holds the 24 hour sailing distance record for monohulls and the trans-Atlantic crossing record of 5 days, 14 hours, 21 minutes and 25 seconds. In addition to the 2015 Rolex Sydney Hobart Race, she won the no less tough Fastnet Race. This year she smashed the monohull record in the Transpac race with an average speed of 20.2 knots.

‘LDV Comanche’s nickname, “the aircraft carrier”, gives away what sets her apart from two of her rivals, Black Jack and Wild Oats XI. Indeed, her beam at the stern is so great it could accommodate both Black Jack and Wild Oats XI. Her optimum heel angle is anything over 20 degrees and she has the same wetted surface as Wild Oats XI at 25 degrees. The 46 metre/150 feet high mast sits directly above the canting keel and she designed deliberately to be able to – just – slip under Sydney Harbour Bridge. The mast has a static load of 75 tonnes and 150 tonnes under sail, or, to put it another way, the same weight as 80 LDV T60 Utes hanging from the mast.

Suspended from the mast is a 410 square metre mainsail, which will carry a massive picture of an LDV T60 Ute for the race. In downwind configuration, this expands to a massive 1022 square metres and the largest spinnaker is 1100 square metres. Under the yacht is a canting keel that may be swung out 35 degrees in either direction in as little as 25 seconds, while there is space on either side of the hull for 6.5 tonnes of water in the ballast tanks.

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Comanche – A Fast Racer

October 18, 2015 By Daniel Mihai Popescu 2 Comments

Comanche is a 100ft (30.5 meters) sailing yacht, which has been built with the scope to break every yachting record possible, winning prestigious yacht races, and meaning that it will probably become the fastest. The beautiful yacht, a Super Maxi class, has been commissioned by the Netscape creator, James H. Clark and his wife, the former Victoria’s Secret’s Australian model, Kristy Hinze.

The sleek black and red yacht has been built under a contract with a lot of confidentiality clauses by Hodgdon Yachts from Maine. Comanche has one of the largest single-infusion hulls constructed in America, and even globally. The oven used to cure the hull and superstructure is the largest one in the United States, and has been built by Hodgdon Yachts itself. They have been using advanced composites for several years, both for yachts and for military projects.

Super Maxi Class Yacht, Comanche

The naval architects are Van Peteghem Lauriot Prévost (VPLP) and Guillaume Verdier, acknowledged names in the racing world. The 150 foot mast has been constructed by Southern Spars and the sails are from industry leader, North Sails , including a spinnaker of more than 11,000 square feet. Launched in September 2014, Comanche is the result of studies of the IMOCA Macif and Banque Populaire, first and second in the 2012 Vendee Globe. Different from her other 100′ rivals, like Wild Oats XI or Perpetual Loyal , with her large beam, her mast far aft and a boom directly over the transom, Comanche has a much larger sail plan. The cockpit has been designed for manual maneuvers rather than hydraulic and therefore saves weight. Comanche has a powerful hull shape and a maximum draft of 6.5m in order to enter most ports. With a low freeboard and lateral ballast the center of gravity has been lowered to gain power.

Comanche and its crew, downward view

Comanche is commanded by renowned US skipper Ken Read, and raced by a world-class crew of twenty-one international sailors.

Her performances, like what Ken Read has explained that happened during the Transatlantic Race 2015, an average speed of 25 knots per total, a top speed of 38.8 knots, and large distances passed in the mid 30’s knots, are things which will make me to dedicate more space to this kind of posts. I am thrilled by what man can achieve with a good boat, and pure racing, like this, using just the power of the wind and the ability to float over the furious waves, even to brake them if necessary.

Comanche Sails!! FAST!! from Onne van der Wal on Vimeo .

Above is a very short (too short) video made by Onne van der Wal, which shows Comanche sailing. Before publishing this, I have been looking for more videos, maybe more relevant, like I wish for this website to be, a better compilation of related sources on different matters.

So, I found this on YouTube, posted by sailingshack, where Ken Read presents the magnificent boat.

It really is a great boat, a very expensive one as well, it took $15 million to be built, and many millions more for the rest (called “campaigns”), and it made second place in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, losing to Wild Oats XI , and also second in the Transatlantic race 2015 (TR 15), loosing to Rambler 88 with a difference of only seven hours, which is really incredible, because in such a competition, they arrive at days distance. More on racing, in future posts, maybe I’ll make a new category.

I hope you like it and I’ll tell you more about yacht racing in general. What do you think, are you speed racers?

If you like what you read, please subscribe to this blog by completing the form . If you want to help more, start by following us on Twitter , and like our page on Facebook . You don’t know what good things may happen. To lighten your day, check our pins on Pinterest , we can be friends there too. Oh, and if you need a really good looking blog attached to your site, or just for fun, to express your feelings more competitively, read this Own Your Website offer! Thank you very much.

Copyright © 2015 The Yacht Owner – Comanche – A Fast Racer

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About Daniel Mihai Popescu

Daniel Mihai Popescu is a ship engineer with background in sea transportation, real estate, yacht brokerage, construction, entrepreneurship. Avid reader, traveled the world, explorer of the human nature. Never stopped learning, now I create and manage Wordpress based sites . • Twitter • Facebook • LinkedIn • Instagram • Pinterest • Goodreads • Medium •

January 7, 2016 at 14:04

Buna ziua, Mi-as dori un articol scris de dvs. despre velierele cu chila leagan, swing keel sailboat cum sunt cunoscute. Multumesc.

January 7, 2016 at 20:31

Am să caut mai multe informații despre ele, mie tipul ăsta de chilă mi se pare o complicație inutilă deși îi văd utilitatea. Mi-ar face plăcere dacă v-ați abona la newsletter, șamd…

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Published on December 31st, 2019 | by Editor

Comanche sold after Sydney Hobart win

Published on December 31st, 2019 by Editor -->

Since race record holder Comanche beat her four super maxi rivals to take line honours in the 2019 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, it has been reported that Jim Cooney and his wife Samantha Grant have sold their 100 footer to Russian interests.

This was the third elapsed time win for Comanche in the 628-nautical-mile blue water classic, first taking line honors in 2015 before going on to set the current record in 2017 of 1 day 9 hrs 15 mins 24 secs.

Comanche, the innovative record-breaking maxi yacht designed by VPLP and Guillaume Verdier and launched in 2014 for Jim and Kristy Clark, was sold to Australian Cooney prior to the 2017 race.

Race details – Entry list – Standings – Tracker – Facebook

Background : The 2019 fleet will be chasing line honours and the overall Tattersall Cup win in the 628nm Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race which starts December 26, 2019. From Sydney Harbour, the fleet sails out into the Tasman Sea, down the south-east coast of mainland Australia, across Bass Strait (which divides the mainland from the island State of Tasmania), then down the east coast of Tasmania. At Tasman Island the fleet turns right into Storm Bay for the final sail up the Derwent River to the historic port city of Hobart.

Tags: Comanche , Sydney Hobart

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Comanche sets new Transatlantic Race record

Related articles, superyacht directory.

The 30.48 metre sailing yacht Comanche has set a new monohull race record after taking Monohull Line Honours in the 2022 RORC Transatlantic Race.

Skippered by Mitch Booth, Comanche and its crew completed the 3,000 nautical mile race from Lanzarote to Grenada in seven days, 22 hours, 1 minute and 4 seconds (that's two days quicker than the previous record holder).

Constructed in carbon fibre by American builder Hodgdon to a design by VPLP/Verdier Maxi, the yacht was delivered in 2014 after being commissioned by software mogul Jim Clark.

This is not the first time Comanche has tasted success – since its launch the yacht has set several speed records, most notably sailing from New York’s Ambrose Lighthouse to the UK’s Lizard Point in five and a half days in 2016.

The sailing yacht also finished in second place during the 2014 Sydney Hobart race and broke a 24-hour record in the 2015 Transatlantic Race after covering 618 nautical miles in one day.

Described as a “Laser dinghy or 49er morphed with rocket ship” by BOAT’ International's own Marilyn Mower , Comanche ’s defining feature is its comparatively wide 7.6 metre beam which helps save weight, in turn increasing its speed.

Other notable features include its rig which rises 47 metres above the water and a solid stainless steel keel.

Comanche is the largest yacht entered in the 2022 RORC Transatlantic Race and the team must now wait until the remaining competitors have crossed the finish line, to see if any of the 21 teams performing can eclipse their corrected time.

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100-foot supermaxi Andoo Comanche returns to Australia

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Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2024

Andoo Comanche

John ‘Herman’ Winning Jr has chartered the Sydney Hobart record holder, Comanche . In their first hit out, Winning took Line Honours from Black Jack in the fluky 2022 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race. She took Line Honours in just under 20 hours and won the inaugural 260nm Tollgate Islands Race. Herman has prefixed the boat’s name with ‘Andoo’ for Andoo Products, which partners with his Appliances Online. This is the boat to beat for Line Honours.

American Jim Clark and Aussie wife Kristy bought brand new Comanche for her first Rolex Sydney Hobart in 2014 and finished 49 mins behind Line Honours victor, Wild Oats XI , ahead of her Line Honours victory in 2015 after scoring Line Honours in the light and fluky 2015 Rolex Fastnet Race. She also smashed the 2225 nautical mile Transpac monohull record in 2017. Jim Cooney and Samantha Grant bought her just prior to the 2017 Rolex Sydney Hobart and as LDV Comanche , she took Line Honours and the race record after a protest against Wild Oats XI . In 2018, Comanche was pipped for second over the Rolex Sydney Hobart finish line by Black Jack after a race-long battle between the four 100-footers, won by Wild Oats XI . Cooney last took her to Hobart in 2019 and took Line Honours after doing the same in the 2019 Transpac Race.

Competitor Details

OFFICIAL ROLEX SYDNEY HOBART MERCHANDISE

Shop the official clothing range of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race and the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia in person at the Club in New South Head Road, Darling Point or online below.  

From casual to technical clothing, there is something for all occasions. Be quick as stock is limited!

Comanche owner a late convert to the ocean

Jim clark, the owner of new supermaxi and strong sydney to hobart line honours chance comanche, grew up a long way from the ocean..

He wants to rule the waves now, but Comanche owner Jim Clark started life a long way from the ocean. (AAP)

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How Comanche took more than a day off the transatlantic record

• Elaine Bunting
• November 15, 2016

The supermaxi Comanche broke the transatlantic record for monohulls (west to east) in July 2016, taking more than a day off the record. Here's how

No sailing record has a more storied history, or is harder to beat, than the transatlantic record. At a time when sailing records are being divided into smaller currencies and made with greater frequency, this is the big one. Ever since 1905, when Scots skipper Charlie Barr reduced it to 12 days in Wilson Marshall’s 56m/185ft three-masted schooner Atlantic , it has been a grand and famous prize.

On 28 July this year a new high water mark for this famous record was set when the 30.5m/100ft supermaxi Comanche crossed the finish line of the historic course from Ambrose Light, New York to The Lizard Point in Cornwall. She had finished a job for which she was built. The crew completed the 2,880-mile course (sailing 2,946 miles, only 66 miles farther than the Great Circle distance) in 5d 14h 21m and, in doing so, Jim Clark’s super-machine and her all-star crew bettered the previous record by well over a day.

See the full report from July on Yachting World.

The record Comanche broke is notoriously hard. That is why the last incumbent, Mari Cha IV , had hung onto it since 2003. Comanche , unlike the 42m/138ft Briand-designed schooner that preceded her, is an insanely powerful contraption with massive beam at the stern, long reverse sheer, a mast well abaft 50 per cent of the boat length, a towering, narrow mainsail and a long boom overhanging the stern. Comanche was built for raw speed with the wind abaft the beam.

But to break the record, the yacht needed mainly reaching conditions to take her all the way across, riding only one weather system. And it had to be the right kind of low pressure, not too fast and not one that would fizzle or be blocked before it reached Ireland.

“We needed a low pressure that was strong enough to make it all the way to the English Channel,” explains Stan Honey, the team’s navigator. “The question for Comanche was: could we find a system that was slow enough that she could stay in front of it?”

Honey went back to 2004, downloaded historical weather data in GRIB format and ran the boat’s polars starting every six hours from June through November for every year since. “What I found,” he says, “is that there was, on average, only two [suitable] systems per year.”

In June, Comanche returned from the Newport-Bermuda Race. Skipper Ken Read had his pick of 30 of the world’s best sailors, to be on a rolling rota over a three-month period, ready to go at a moment’s notice. Boat captain Casey Smith prepared Comanche . She had always been designed to sail in manual configuration, as world speed sailing records forbid the use of stored power, so the hydraulic pit winch and sail controls could instead be powered by rotary pumps.

One of the things Stan Honey had discovered was: “If you succeeded, it [would be on a weather pattern that] was reaching and running, so we took fewer sails and removed the daggerboards.” Taking the boards out saved 400kg. Upwind sails that would not play a part in record conditions were left ashore.

Twice the weather looked as if it was shaping up right. There were two near-misses when airline tickets were bought and crew were on their way to the airport only to find that the forecasts had changed. But in July a suitable weather window appeared, and continued to improve. This was a low that was travelling slowly by virtue of an old warm front left over and a weak leftover low on the north-west edge of the Azores High.

At the right speed for Comanche , and with a low probability of overtaking her, it could potentially carry her on south-westerlies all the way. It was Code Green.

Her crew headed out from New York late in the evening of 22 July. After all the planning – six long years from concept to this point – Ken Read was not aboard. He had a prior commitment to commentate at the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series Portsmouth. The team decided to go ahead. “It was helpful for us all to know how rare this weather was,” says Stan Honey.

The first few nights at sea were difficult and there were times when the record hung in the balance. First, Comanche had to negotiate a line of thunderstorms. Behind these the wind fell light and they slowed. A hold up of an hour or two may not seem that critical, but it was worrying for the crew because it increased the odds that they might fall off the back of the low pressure system. Typically, this is how records fail: a breakage or some other delay kicks you out the back door.

But past that the boat was, Casey Smith remembers, “ripping along”. They were doing 550-mile days; they were blasting. Though it was mainly grey and overcast, that did not dampen the mood on board. True to the forecast, the sailing was, Smith says, ideal.

There were 17 crew on board, the fewest Comanche had ever raced with. Since conditions were not expected to vary greatly, they weren’t going to be doing many sail changes. Smith remembers doing only five sail changes during the record. “Normally we might do that in a day,” he says.

The only sails used apart from the main were the A3, Comanche’s VMG-style running sail, up “90 per cent of the time” and the FRO, or fractional reaching Code 0.

Comanche’s actual track is in black. The theoretical optimum route from the GFS HO weather analysis is in blue.

Coming on home

At times there was fog, and the radar and AIS watch was intensified. “Fog is always the case with transatlantic records, as you’re doing it in the warm sector,” says Stan Honey. “It’s all grey and every bone in your body tells you you are going to get pasted, but because you are travelling along with it you don’t.”

When the record had its hairy moments, it was because the breeze faded. “Once we cleared out of the top of Newfoundland and through the ice areas that was our lightest period of the race, 15-18 knots,” says Smith. “We had to be very careful. But we were still doing 18-20 knots [of boat speed] and the breeze soon built up.”

But was it rough? Smith just laughs. “Maybe we are going to have to tell people we had 5m seas. No, it was as calm as I’ve seen the Atlantic. We wouldn’t have seen a swell over 2m. Although between the warm and cold front we had lousy visibility, the wonderful thing is that you get flat water and because you are moving with the system seas are just starting to build.” He thinks the maximum wave height was even less. “Never more than 1.5m,” he declares.

“It seemed to be that we were so well lined up on the system that we’d advance to run out of wind down to below 20 knots and then the wind would slowly build up and then run out. That’s how much on the front edge of the system we were. We’d poke out of it and come back in,” says Smith. “ But in flat water and breeze, doing 500+ mile days, we were just coming on home.”

A big, hollow drum

It never got especially cold on board. According to Casey Smith some of the crew did not wear boots at any point on the way across, only deck shoes. But the water temperature dropped to 9°C so perhaps that is merely a measure of their hardiness. Honey laughs that he knows a Kiwi sailor who wore Crocs rounding Cape Horn – and it’s not an indication of fair weather.

On the other hand, the safety routines aboard were stringent. Crew had AIS beacons, strobes, always wore harnesses and tethers, and were clipped on “the whole time. No one comes on deck without a harness or lifejacket,” says Smith.

Apart from sandwiches for the first day, food was all freeze-dried. There was “not a huge amount of joking; it was a level, calm group and super-professional. Everyone was very focused,” says Smith. But on board it was noisy: the boat is a big, hollow carbon drum. And it’s wet, although the worst of the water and wind was kept off the driver and trimmers by an offshore dodger.

Coming into the English Channel in low, grey cloud and fog, Comanche ’s crew were well ahead of the record. The ideal had been to take as much as a day off Mari Cha ’s record, but when they fizzed past Lizard Point, not stopping, but carrying on to the Solent, they had improved the benchmark time by 1d 3h 31m. They had done the whole Atlantic, just shy of 3,000 miles, at an average speed of 21.44 knots.

Transatlantic by numbers

Record course: Ambrose Light to The Lizard, leaving Nantucket Shoal and Cape Race to port

Great Circle distance: 2,880 miles

Distance sailed: 2,946 miles

Average speed on theoretical course: 21.44 knots

Average speed on actual course: 21.93 knots

Peak GPS speed over ground: 21.5 knots

Average wind: 21.5 knots (TWS)

Average true wind angel: 130.5°

Peak true wind speed (TWS): 32.2 knots (ten-second average)

Could it be bettered?

As soon as a record has been broken it’s customary to ask if it could be bettered, and for Comanche that is a valid question. This is a yacht capable of even more. “For sure,” is Casey Smith’s judgement. “We had periods of light wind, below 15 knots for 24 hours, and if we had had even five more knots of wind we would have taken another 12 hours off the record.

“There is no reason why you wouldn’t have another go.” Stan Honey agrees, but with caveats. “If we had had a somewhat faster system we could easily take another ten hours off the record. But then it is kind of like playing with fire: if you have a system you can barely keep up with, it is a low probability bet. It might take two or three attempts.

“These records are the most frustrating for us. The crew hates it because it feels as if the world is passing them by; the navigator hates it because he’s working every day, and the owner hates it because it’s costing a lot of money!”

Which is why Comanche ’s Atlantic record is so colossal: complete success at their first shot. “This was as good as it gets,” Honey says. “It’s to the credit of Ken Read and the owner, and it’s a real honour to sail with these guys. They really are an extraordinary group; some of the best sailors in the world. You look around and everyone is just really happy to be sailing with each other.”

Jim Clark and his wife, Kristy Hinze Clark, were not aboard for this record, but when they finished Clark said: “ Comanche was built to break ocean records and the guys have once again powered our fantastic fat-bottomed girl to another title. I am so proud of the entire team and everyone involved in the entire programme from top to bottom. Kristy and I are over the moon.”

Comanche transatlantic crew: a who’s who of sailing

Casey Smith (AUS), boat captain Stan Honey (USA), navigator Tony Mutter (NZL), trimmer Dirk de Ridder (NED), main trimmer Chris Maxted (AUS), boat crew Jon von Schwarz (USA), grinder Juggy Clougher (AUS), bow Julien Cressant (FRA), pit Nick Dana (USA), bow Pablo Arrarte (ESP), runners Pepe Ribes (ESP), bow Peter van Niekerk (NED), trimmer Phil Harmer (AUS), grinder Richard Clarke (CAN), runners Robert Greenhalgh (GBR), main trimmer Shannon Falcone (ATG), grinder Yann Riou (FRA), media