The racing yacht ‘BOUdragon’ is the successful former Whitbread-around-the-world racer ‘Silk Cut’. Record-holder Silk was originally raced by Britain’s Lawrie Smith and started the 1997-98 Whitbread Round the World Race as the pre-race favourite, with odds of 7:2. The combination of Lawrie Smith as skipper and strong funding held good promise. A fast boat, with the skipper willing to take some chances, Silk Cut, claimed a new 24-hour monohull world record of 449.1 nm, averaging 18.71 knots on Leg 2 from Cape Town, South Africa to Fremantle, Western Australia.
However, Smith’s luck ran out, when, on Leg 5, from Auckland to Saõ Sebastião in Brazil, the wind gusted to 68 knots and, 2,000 nm from land, Silk Cut’s mast snapped at the second spreader and Smith headed for Ushuaia, the southernmost port in the world and retired from the leg. With a new mast, Silk Cut’s form improved with a win on Leg 6 from Saõ Sebastião to Ft Lauderdale, USA, beating Paul Cayard and EF Language, the eventual race winner, by 78 minutes. But, in a fleet made up of 10 Whitbread 60s, Silk Cut was only able to finish midway through the field, in fifth place overall.
Now called BOUdragon, Silk Cut has been completely renovated. BOUdragon is also the ocean racer to train young talent with the ambition to sail big racing yachts, and a springboard to races like the Ocean Race.