Mike Sanderson reports to us live from SPEEDBOAT - day one of the Newport to Bermuda Race

Less than 18 months ago, while sitting in St Tropez with Alex he mentioned that if he was to do a new race maxi that he would like it to be ready for the 2008 Newport Bermuda race. From that point on we always knew the timing would be tight, considering at that stage we didn't really have an idea of the concept. So as you can imagine there was big satisfaction from the team when at 15-30 local time in Newport yesterday we powered off the start line at a pretty quick upwind speed of 13 knots. She is all very new and is going to take some learning before we get 100% out of her, but there is no doubt in my mind that Speedboat is going to be a great boat.

We were the 16th start, so with the first boats away at 1pm it was a pretty amazing sight to see so many boats spread out as we barrelled our way towards Bermuda. It was a little bit of a shame that Rambler, the closest boat to us in size, due to being in a different division, started an hour in front of us. So we haven't actually seen them on the course yet but the position report in the middle of the night had said that we pretty much caught them up, which was about when we had hoped, so thats all good.

The boys have settled into the watch system nicely and it is great to be sitting next to my mate Stan Honey again in the Nav station discussing with Alex the strategy that we will play. Although the last year in America's Cup world has been very tough for everyone involved and I have missed the sailing a lot I have a huge amount of pride in what we have created in TEAMORIGIN, and it is fantastic to be sailing with such a big part of the team.

The race is looking tricky, we have a patch of light airs to deal with and so we are hoping there won't be a full park up there and the guys behind come roaring up. Apart from that life is great here on Speedboat.