Hayim and Tomlinson Shatter Around Long Island Record
Earlier this morning, Stuart Hayim and John Tomlinson, running a 42-foot Marine Technology, Inc. catamaran with twin Mercury Racing 1,350-hp turbocharged engines, set a new unofficial Around Long Island Record of 2 hours and 11 minutes. (The official record time is still pending verification by the National Power Boat Association.) Hayim and Tomlinson cut 55 minutes off the existing mark, which was established last year by Joe Cibellis and Joe Sgro in a 43-foot Outerlimits V-bottom with twin 725-hp V-10 Ilmor Marine engines and 56 minutes of Hayim’s original record, which he set in 1989 in a 32-foot Skater cat with Joey Imprescia on the throttles.
“Johnny did all the hard work,” said Hayim, the New York-based driver of the boat. “The first half was sleepy. We had nothing to do but talk most of the way. The other way, we had payback. It was rough. It hurt. I was counting down each mile on the GPS.
“It’s been a while since I’ve done this,” Hayim added, then laughed. “I’m 65 years old.”
Hayim and Tomlinson had originally planned to attack the 270-mile run counterclockwise. However, because of commercial boat traffic in the area, the United States Coast Guard required them to attack the run clockwise.
“We ran between 125 and 139 mph all the way up the sound,” said Tomlinson, who throttled the boat. “But in the open ocean, it was kind of a washing machine. I’d get it up to 110, and we’d fall into a hole and I’d have to pull it back. I had to throttle the boat all the way out there, and I didn’t want to do anything stupid to break it or mess up the fuel system. We took 500 gallons of fuel, 260 in the tanks and 150 in each fuel cell. We had a pump system on the cell that I turned on to feed the tank. I had tested back home in Miami running for 225 miles, and doing that I burned 375 gallons of fuel. So I knew had more than enough with 500 gallons.
“Once we got around Long Island and came back inside, I was able to run up to 150 mph wherever I could,” he added. “I just had to slow down for ferry and tug wakes. I don’t know—I haven’t run the numbers—but I’m guessing we averaged something like 120 mph.”
Hayim said his decision to run today rather than wait for the also-NPBA-sanctioned Don Aronow Memorial Race Around Long Island Race on Sept. 22 paid off.
“We got perfect weather on one side,” he said. “I think for anyone to do better, they’d need to have perfect weather on both sides, and you could have to wait weeks for that.”
Hayim estimated that the record-setting run raised $20,000 to $30,000 for the Don Monti Cancer Center at The North Shore University Hospital so far—and may raise up to $100,000 through at-the-door donations during a party at his New York-based Ferrari dealership in a few weeks.
“The Monti family and all the people there poo-poo what they do, but I wouldn’t be here without them,” he said.
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