Not Your Typical Father-Son Adventure

The World Sailing Speed Record Council has ratified the record-breaking effort by the Italian father and son duo of Vittorio and Nico Malingri when they sailed their 20-foot F20 catamaran across the Atlantic Ocean.

Leaving from Dakar in West Africa on April 9, the team sailed a distance of 2551 nm to Guadeloupe in the southern Caribbean Sea, finishing April 20 for a time of 11 days, 1 hour, 9 minutes and 30 seconds.

“The experience was spectacular, we were always on target, the boat was great to travel on,” Nico Malingri said. “We started to get tired towards the end but up until then we were happy with our average speed, we were doing well, it was a lot of fun.”

The distance is roughly the same as between New York and San Francisco. Malingri’s maintained an average speed of 9.62 knots, beating the previous record (11:11:25:42) by over 10 hours set by French duo Benoit Lequin and Pierre-Yves Moreau in 2007.

Life on board was atop the trampoline, with their only protection being their technical clothing and a small protective canvas roof on the decks. The crew’s diet consisted of snacks and cold or semi-prepared foods.

The cat had a few watertight compartments for food, water and changes of clothing and was equipped with:
• 2 satellite telephones
• 2 GPSs
• 2 compasses
• 1 watertight satellite tablet
• 2 fixed micro-sport cams with Wi-Fi
• 1 sport cam with mobile remote and a self-leveling device
• 1 sail and hull repair kit
• Solar panels
• 2 batteries

Also onboard was a manual desalinization pump, EPIRBs, life jackets, survival suits, radar reflectors, utensils and a medicine chest.