Mike Sanderson, onboard Speedboat after finishing the Newport to Bermuda race:

“Well the goal at the first meeting to frame the concept of what the New “Speedboat” was going to be, and its objectives was always quite clearly defined as to a line honors win in the 2008 Newport Bermuda race, at just after 8 am this morning local Time we cruised across the line enabling us to tick that goal off, a 250 mile beat in between 7 and 10 knots of wind meant that the record was long gone, but as I mentioned yesterday the time to be able to test and play around with different modes upwind has been priceless.

“The boat has been faultless, a full credit to the big team back in Spain at Juan Yacht design that designed her, as well as the many thousands of hours that where put into her by the team here on Speedboat, Tom Faire and the guys at Cookson Boats, Matt Smeaton and his team at North sails NZ, Steve Wilson and the team at Southern Spars, Greg Waters and the crew at Central coast hydraulics as well as many other smaller teams and individuals that have all contributed so heavily to the speedboat program, it has been a pretty hectic 18 months since the trigger was pulled to go ahead.

“How we end up in the race on Handicap is now out of our hands, she was never designed with a handicap place in mind, but we will take any good results in that game when they come along, it will prove to be a race for the smaller boats I am pretty sure, from the forecasts it looks like there is a good chance that the fifty footers will come reaching in at pretty high speed, but only time will tell how that all works out.

“Now that we are here in one piece and the boat is all working well we can now firmly set our sights on being ready for a Trans Atlantic record attempt in July, let’s hope that the wind gods shine favourably on us and we get a chance to have a crack, I have no doubt that should we get a reasonable window that we have the hardware to give it a great shot.

“So that’s it for now from the 2008 Speedboat Newport to Bermuda race, it has been a great race to spend some quality race time on the yacht, a great race and opportunity to get 12 of the TEAMORIGIN team sailing together, but most importantly it has been a great couple of weeks building the Speedboat team, the feel on board is fantastic, all in all a great bunch of guys, but then I guess it was always going to be, Alex, Jane and the Jackson Girls are a lovely family to be around, what they have done here is so very cool, and I have no doubt that it will go from strength to strength. Until next time.”