Tiketitan heeled ominously, then accelerated to 13 knots, overtaking more cautious sailors who remained under jib and mainsail.

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Mariquita's crew trims her huge mainsail by hand, forming a line and tugging in the rope with methodical jerks.

FORBES: Old Gaffers

She also had to climb up the 80 foot mast on her boat, Pindar, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as hand-stitch her giant mainsail with 1, 500 stitches after it ripped in half.

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Shirley Robertson of CNN's "Mainsail" show, and a good friend of Simpson, said the catamaran he was sailing Friday was "a boat that is about as extreme as it gets" and would have been the "most radical" he had sailed.

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