World Speed Record

The Sunday of July 20, 2008, tropical storm Cristobal was passing by the North Carolina coast. With sustained winds of 50mph I decided to go babysit Annabelle while the storm passed. While there I decided to take advantage of the situation and set a new world speed record with a Morgan Out Island 41. My first attempt was pitiful - less than theoretical hull speed. Putting my best Tim the Tool Man thought cap on, I did some re-working and was able to push Annabelle up to 42 knots and then finally with a little more adjustment I hit a max of 66.2 knots! I have a picture of my knot meter to prove my claim. In addition to top speed, I also can claim to have covered the most distance in 10 hours of any Morgan OI 41 - 671.6 nautical miles.

If you ever heard the BBC production of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", late in the 12 part series Zaphord comes to himself in an dream and tells himself to go see Zarniwoop. When he goes, Zaphord is told that Zarniwoop is on an intergalactic cruise in his office. So it was with Annabelle's two new records - they were done while still sitting in her slip!

Back in 2001, a not so wise wiring mistake tripped a 100A breaker which separated the battery voltage sense from the 12VDC 150A generator while it was running. The controller seeing a voltage drop started raising the output voltage of the generator - eventually hitting 60 VDC. This resulted in may of my 12VDC instruments being damaged and having to be set off for repair. The knot meter (which also has the log) was one of these, and when it came back the 671.6 miles I had traveled that year had been erased with the unit's log being set to 0 miles. Each year I have added that to my total miles covered - but it still bothered me that it was off.

To fix this, I removed the paddle wheel speed sensor from the thru-hole and set it in a bucket that was about 1/3 full of water. To reduce friction, the paddle wheel was not in the water. Using a water pump I sucked water out of the bucket and shot it at the paddle wheel. As noted, my first try only gave me about 5 knots, then I reduced the size of the output hose, which increased the velocity dramatically. After running for just over 10 hours straight I had covered the 671.6 miles.

Here is a hard to see picture of the setup. The blue is the bucket, under the clamp is the pump. Coming out of the pump the water pass through the gray valve into the large black hose and then into the smaller black hose that is visible. The speed sensor is to the left of the pump also under the clamp. You can see a white line that is the O-ring to seal water out of the boat.

Basically a closer view of the previous picture

Here you can see the small tube as it terminates at the paddle wheel.

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