THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 1, 1996 TAG: 9610010264
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 97 lines
Eleven days ago at noon, Troy Shields and Larry Graf eased a small center-console boat through Lynnhaven Inlet, turned right toward the ocean and mashed down on the throttle.
Thirty-six and one-half hours and 728 miles later, groggy from little sleep and pounding seas, Shields and Graf saw the welcome beam of a spotlight from a nearby harbor.
They had reached Bermuda in record time, shattering several notions about what small boats can do and how fast they can do them.
Boating magazine, which will award a trophy for the trip, declared that no one has ever made a run of that length at that speed in a small boat.
Shields and Graf also may have provided a glimpse of where boating is headed as clean-air rules from the Environmental Protection Agency force engine makers to switch to cleaner outboards.
Their boat, a 26-foot catamaran design by Glacier Bay of Seattle, powered by twin 90-horsepower, four-stroke Honda outboards from Todd Marine Enterprises of Virginia Beach, ran at constant speeds of 21 to 25 mph for most of the trip - and made it on less than their 420-gallon tank of gas.
This is unheard-of for most gas-wasting, two-stroke outboards that achieve little better than a mile per gallon. The Glacier Bay-Todd Marine boat got about 2.5 miles per gallon.
And the catamaran hull accepted punishment that most monohull boats might not have. Especially toward the end of the trip.
``It was a once-in-a-lifetime adventure,'' said Shields, who had the boat shipped back to Virginia Beach and flew home.
Shields is general manager of Todd Marine, and Graf is chief designer and president of Glacier Bay.
Richard Stepler, Boating's editor-in-chief, called it ``the first successful high-speed run to Bermuda.'' It beats by more than a day a record that has stood since 1904, he added.
``It really has been only with the advent of these power catamarans, combined with four-stroke outboard engines, that makes it possible to carry enough fuel to make that distance.''
The magazine has established a New York-to-Bermuda Challenge and will award the trophy to anyone besting the Shields-Graf time.
But Stepler said, ``It's going to be a while before anybody beats this record.''
Graf and a writer for Boating set out from New York to Bermuda at the end of July but ran into such bad weather they had to detour to Virginia Beach.
The Virginia Beach-Bermuda trip, because of the detour around the Outer Banks, is about the same length as the trip from New York, so Boating agreed to change the starting point - and the crew.
``He jumped at it,'' Todd Marine President Todd Schaubach said of Shields. ``Troy's very passionate about what he does. There was no question that if it went out of our store, he was going to go.''
Shields said they waited almost two months for a three-day weather window. Finally, 12 days ago, the Bermuda Weather Service called to say it was a go. Graf flew overnight from Seattle and the pair left the following day, Sept. 20, at noon.
The boat is totally open, so the pair set up a small canopy and an air mattress for sleeping. The boat was loaded with safety gear loaned by Boating, including personal survival suits, a life raft, a satellite phone and emergency beacons. They packed ready-made sandwiches, snacks, juice and bottled water. The pair took turns keeping watch, getting little sleep.
For the first day and a half the weather was fine, the sea calm. About 180 miles out to sea, Shields began seeing large schools of fish. ``I'm driving the boat along and the biggest blue marlin I've ever seen in my life leaps from the water. It reminded me of one of those pictures in a sports magazine. Then I saw the fin coming at the boat like a torpedo, and at the last second it dove under us. It was big enough to eat half of me.''
At night, beyond shipping lanes, the sea was pitch black, Shields said. ``We didn't see another boat, ship or plane. We were the only humans out there.''
Saturday morning, he said, he awoke to ``the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen.'' They cut the engines, changed to lighter clothes, ate a raisin-bagel breakfast and resumed the run.
That and one other stop, after a pounding they were about to take, were the only pauses on the journey.
Late that afternoon, they began to hit squalls, with winds up to 65 mph. The wind, he said, ``picked up the water from the ocean and threw it at us.''
They saw lightning, but it never reached them. They encountered huge swells and wind-blown waves from three directions that a different kind of boat might not have survived.
About 50 miles off Bermuda, near midnight, they made radio contact with the harbor master, who steered them toward lighted buoys. And a friend called on the radio to tell them to look for his spotlight.
They arrived in St. George's Harbor about 12:30 a.m.
There followed a hero's welcome. ``Everybody who was a local had heard about us,'' Shields said. ``We were those two crazy Americans who made their way to Bermuda on a small boat on a pair of outboards.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Troy Shields stands with the Glacier Bay Canyon Runner catamaran in
which he and Larry Graf made the trip to Bermuda.
Color drawing by John B. Earle/The Virginian-Pilot
KEYWORDS: RECORD VIRGINIA BEACH BERMUDA SMALL BOAT by CNB