''Team Philips'' was a catamaran sailing vessel built to try to take
Pete Goss
Pete Goss, MBE (born 22 December 1961) is a British yachtsman who has sailed more than .
A former Royal Marine, he is famous for his pioneering project Team Philips. He was invested in the Legion d'Honneur for saving fellow sailor Raphaël Din ...
around the world in record time.
The design consisted of two thin,
wave piercing
A wave-piercing boat hull has a very fine bow, with reduced buoyancy in the forward portions. When a wave is encountered, the lack of buoyancy means the hull pierces through the water rather than riding over the top, resulting in a smoother ri ...
hulls, each with its own sail, connected by high placed bridges between the hulls to minimise wave drag. It was built in
Totnes
Totnes ( or ) is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England, within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is about west of Paignton, about west-so ...
, England to compete in
The Race, a no-holds-barred drag race around the world. It was the biggest ocean racing yacht ever built, and there was enough space between the hulls to park 80 cars. Overall dimensions were , and .
It pushed the boundaries and challenged the norms of ocean racing yachts in three main ways:
# unsupported wave-piercing bow sections.
# huge unstayed windsurfer-style rig.
# two masts mounted abeam of each other (side by side), one on each hull.
It initially ran into trouble during its trials in March 2000 due to errors in the computer modelling of the composite hull. The first of the port hull broke off. It was repaired with the addition of internal bracing. It then suffered from problems with the pioneering bearings that supported the massive masts which required further repairs.
It was abandoned during a freak storm in the mid-Atlantic in December 2000. winds and waves started to produce cracks in the crew's central safety pod and forced Pete Goss to send out a mayday signal. He abandoned ship with the rest of his crew, and the vessel broke up several days later.
External links
Team Philips yacht lost(28 March 2000) - Team Philips
BBC News(16 November 2000) - Team Philips back at sea
National Maritime Museum Cornwall- Team Philips exhibition for 2005
{{2000 shipwrecks
Individual sailing vessels
Individual catamarans
Shipwrecks of the Isles of Scilly
Maritime incidents in 2000
Totnes
2000s sailing yachts