- [Narrator] A few years ago,

entrepreneur Jim Clark envisioned a boat

built purely for speed.

A boat so light, so fast,

that it would shatter every record it attempted.

In 2014...

That dream became a reality,

with 100-foot monohull, Comanche.

- [Ken] It's by almost any measure

the fastest monohull in the world.

- [Narrator] With her revolutionary design,

she has since been dominating

the world of professional sailing,

blowing competitors out of the water.

Now, skipper Ken Read is on a mission

to break one of sailing's most prestigious benchmarks,

the transatlantic record.

- It's one of the holy grails of ocean-going records.

- [Narrator] A grueling journey of 2,880 nautical miles

from New York to the southern tip of England.

The crew's success depends largely

on how elite navigator, Stan Honey,

can predict, harness,

and adapt to the Atlantic's fickle weather patterns.

If broken, this record will secure Comanche's place

among the most successful racing boats in sailing history.

(slow mysterious chiming)

- Overview of Comanche is really simple.

It's, uh, Jim and Kristy Clark's dream to have

the ultimate race boat, the ultimate monohull race boat.

- [Narrator] Clark's team analyzed every aspect

of the modern monohull, then set out to build

the next iteration of racing boats,

principally designed to break open ocean records.

- [Ken] The build team that we assembled

are the best of the best.

- There was no expense spared in creating this thing.

It's either carbon or titanium.

- With the engineering structure,

with the use of carbon fiber,

with this canting keel mechanism,

this boat is literally half the weight

of a boat like this, even 10, 15 years ago.

- Ken Read, the skipper, and Jim Clark, the owner,

gave the designer a very, very clear mission,

which was to design and build the fastest possible boat

that was legal to enter into

the major ocean races around the world,

and to, ideally, set the course records for these events.

That sort of clarity of objective was, I think, critical

to the boat coming out the way it did.

- You know, it's meant to make a statement

in the sailing world, and you can just tell

by its outward appearance, it makes a statement. (laughs)

- The level of detail that they take in building these boats

then filters down throughout the whole sailing team.

- Ken is among the best sailors in the world.

He's a commentator for the America's Cup,

he's extremely knowledgeable, you know, about sailing,

and he's a great skipper.

- Ultimately, what I'm pretty good at doin'

is getting a compatible group of all-stars

from all around the globe,

that can actually handle a boat like this.

It's like a Formula One car:

You let it get away from you, it'll get away from you.

- It is a very dangerous boat.

Everybody who is onboard this boat

either has America's Cup, Volvo Ocean Race,

Grand Prix high-end racing background.

It's their career; it's their job.

- My job, specifically, is really quite easy:

I get to sail the coolest boat in the world.

I guess, as the skipper of the boat,

I'm ultimately responsible for the safety of the crew,

the big decisions, you know?

I work very closely with Stan Honey, the navigator,

on where we position ourselves in the ocean.

It's critical, because the navigator and the skipper

work together very closely.

And then where we overlap and work together,

is in the tactic area.

- The boat's a 100-foot screamin' machine,

that has been built to break every record in the world

that we can, and she's on her way to doing that.

- [Stan] Once in the water,

Comanche went straight for her competitors.

- Wild Oats is the boat to knock off,

and we're here for a reason, but there's also

three or four other really good boats in this event,

that could do the same exact thing,

so we've just gotta go out and sail well,

and let the chips fall.

- [Chris] The sheer size of it, it looks different

to any other boat out there at the moment.

(crowd cheering)

- I think it's fair to say,

we've got the fastest 100-footer in the world.

You saw what it did off the starting line

and what it did down that first run,

and we were 30 miles ahead when we broke.

We love this boat.

- [Jim] We've had good luck, racing in those races

and setting the records.

- This boat's unique,

because it's the fastest in the world. (laughs)

- [Narrator] With wind in their sails, the Comanche team

set their sights on sailing's most prestigious prize,

the transatlantic record.

- Stan Honey is a legend in our sport.

When you think of all the great navigators,

Stan is one of those guys right at the top

of the list who comes to mind.

The amount of work that he puts into it,

to make these attempts happen,

without him, it wouldn't happen.

- So, uh, the transatlantic monohull record is

probably the most prestigious sailing record of any.

- [Narrator] In 1905, the transatlantic record

was first set by the schooner, Atlantic.

It took her 12 days and four hours to cross,

a benchmark that stood for 100 years.

Since then, only four boats have improved on her record.

- [Ken] The current project we're setting out to do

is to try to set the monohull record

for the fastest transatlantic passage.

That record is currently set at

six days, 17 hours, by Mari-Cha.

- Mari-Cha did as well as any boat could do

in that tactic, where you're gonna have to use two systems

to get across the ocean.

So what we were trying to do

was to take an entirely different approach,

which nobody had ever done before in a monohull,

but take a single system all the way across.

- You know, he watches the weather, just religiously,

looking for all these small little things

that might happen.

- I had access to 11 years of historical weather data,

so I routed Comanche every six hours

for each of the last 11 years, from June through November,

and what I discovered was

that there was only two possibilities per year, on average,

where Comanche could stay ahead of a southwesterly storm

the whole way across.

- You can't take the ocean for granted.

This is man against ocean, this is man against the elements.

If I've learned anything, you start to just

get a little cocky in the ocean and it'll bite you, hard.

- [Narrator] July, 2016.

Stan Honey spots a moving low in the westerlies,

potentially favorable for an Atlantic crossing.

Within a day, the international Comanche team

is assembled in New York City, waiting for a green light.

- It was kind of a cruel turn of fate

that it turned out that the perfect weather had evolved

at a time when Kenny couldn't join us.

- For Ken, it just came at a period where

he had a prior commitment with the America's Cup,

but that's the nature of weather.

- [Narrator] If Comanche launches,

Captain Casey Smith will take the helm as skipper.

- I'll (expletive) my pants to start with. (laughs)

- But at that point, Kenny knew just how hard it is

to find these opportunities, and said,

"Okay, well, I can't make it, but you guys gotta go."

- To be able to be told that,

"Hey, you're gonna be the guy in charge,"

and I was really, really happy to be in that position

and trusted like that.

- Casey is an enormously experienced sailor,

and he was the boat captain, so he's the guy

in charge of moving the boat around between events,

so nobody knows the boat better than Casey.

- Casey in the pit, Nick Dana at the rig.

- The transatlantic was a very interesting one for us,

because we had three false starts.

You're waiting for that exact window

and you have to be ready at any moment,

so your life's pretty much on hold.

At this point, we're not that confident

that this was actually, the one.

- We are getting constant information from Stan.

- We wanna start as close as we can to the front,

but ahead of the thunderstorms,

because if the thunderstorms catch us,

you guys know what happens.

- [Nick] It felt like a bit like launch day for NASA,

where you're waitin' for that exact window,

and you have to be ready at any moment.

- [Stan] This is the...

put yourself in harm's way to try to do something

that nobody else has ever done before.

- [Casey] And then when we pushed off the dock

and started motoring out, that's when it really was like,

"Wow, we're doin' it, we're gonna go!"

Amazing.

(tense music)

- It's real, it's happening.

We positioned ourselves about a mile away

from the Ambrose Light, which gives us enough runway

to hit the start line at full speed.

We had the sail combination that we wanted to use,

we had the perfect wind, it was time to let it rip.

- [Nick] The acceleration, doing 25 knots to 30 knots,

- Honey!

Oh, this is perfect, guys.

- [Nick] Doing that jump in such a short amount of time

can often put you on your butt.

- Copy, 16:58.16.

- And we came past the Ambrose Light fully lit up.

Everyone gave a huge hoot and holler

as we went past the start line, and off we went.

(wake hissing)

(dramatic drum-heavy music)

And, it's pretty radical.

You've got all the sail area up,

you've got all the power in the world you need,

so, you know, for a start, you don't want to mess it up.

(wake hissing) (dramatic music)

- New York's there, England is there, 3,100 miles now.

We're gonna knock this bastard off.

(thunder rumbles) (wake hisses)

- [Narrator] But just as they're off,

things take a dangerous turn,

as Comanche tangles with a formidable thunder storm.

- The worst part of it,

the most dangerous part, weather-wise,

was actually the first night and that next morning.

- We started ahead of a front,

and the thunder storms preceding the front

came out earlier than expected,

and kinda gobbled us up, which was unexpected,

and you know, we definitely had to change our plan,

adapt on the go,

sail a course that we weren't expecting to sail,

and the first thing in my mind is,

"Is it over?

"Are we done?

"Are we sailing home and going on standby again?"

- [Narrator] For hours, the team battles

through the wind and waves

of the unforeseen lightning squall.

- You know, you can't control the lightning.

The lightning does what it wants to do,

and so you basically just put that out of your mind

and focus on the sailing.