Here’s a story of restoration, renewal and rebirth, of a state-of-the-art sailing catamaran that ran into a storm 200 miles off the coast of North Carolina, lost its mast, and then floated in the Atlantic for 14 months until it was salvaged, taken to the U.K. and redesigned into a 64-foot power cat. (See the video below.)
The boat started out as hull number one of the Gunboat 55 series, named Rainmaker. On Jan. 30, 2015, its owner, Brian Cohen, an investor in Pinterest, his son, and three professional crewmembers were sailing it from the Gunboat yard in North Carolina to St. Martin. When they were about 200 miles off Cape Hatteras, they were hit by a whiteout squall with 70 knot winds, and the mast and rigging came down.
They were able to cut away the carbon mast and rigging without holing the boat, and no one was injured. But the sheets were wrapped around the prop and they couldn’t maneuver, so they decided to abandon the $2.5 million boat and set off their EPIRB. A Coast Guard helicopter lifted them all off the boat at 1700, and carried them to the airport in Manteo, North Carolina.
Rainmaker drifted for the next 14 months until the crew from the America’s Cup boat Oracle saw it floating off Bermuda (see picture above), and it was towed to shore. The cat was auctioned to a new owner, and was shipped to Multimarine in Plymouth, UK.
Then Nigel Irens, the original designer, worked with Port Pendennis Marina and Multimarine to convert the boat into a power cat. After an extensive rebuild, Rainmaker just emerged as a 64-foot power cat, with twin 315-hp Yanmar diesels producing a cruising speed of 20 knots and a top speed of 25 knots. The new cat is built with lightweight carbon construction, and weighs just 25,000 pounds. See the video:
https://www.multihullcentre.com/multimarine/current-projects/gunboat-55-rainmaker-rebuild/
