You may not feel safe crossing the Atlantic with a 14′ (4.2 m) long open motorboat. The feat may seem a bit reckless to you. Small, open and motorized. Yet Seppo Muraja and Arto Kulmala faced the great ocean with a Marino Mustang powered by a 36 horsepower Archimede/Penta outboard engine without support in the summer of 1970.
The departure took place on the coast of Senegal, in Dakar one of the cities symbol of the adventure, even if by land and ended in Guayana, in what until four years before was the British side in the north-eastern part of the South American subcontinent.
The crossing was conducted in a zigzag pattern around the latitude of the cancer tropics to exploit the trade winds. Psycotppatti, this is the name of the red Mustang, was equipped with a small mast tailoring and two sails, a bow and a sort of mps, a sail to be used with load-bearing winds, raised to make up for the impossibility of embarking all the fuel sufficient for the entire navigation.
The company ended in 47 days: 1128 hours of uninterrupted driving which, calculating an average use of such a boat in about 70 hours of motion per year meant a test equivalent to 16 years of continuous navigation.
The two heroic navigators used much of what they could fish from the sea to feed themselves by cooking on a single large gas cooker and sleeping in turn in the space created under the deck aft of the cockpit.
Marino, the Finnish yard that has been producing pleasure boats for over 60 years, has this year reintroduced the Mustang just as it was 50 years ago. It also offers the possibility of choosing the colours of the deck from a vast palette of pastel shades and, in addition, in the same colour as the radiator grille of the Tohatsu outboard, from a minimum of 15 to a maximum of 50 horsepower. The efficiency of the hull and the lightness of the hull (only 230 kg) are a guarantee of a truly economic management and the purchase price in package is comparable to that of a motorcycle maxi enduro, the best-selling in Italy: from 18 thousand euros up.
LOA: 4.3m
Beam: 1.7m
Weight: 230kg
People: four
Power: 15-50 hp
Test engine: ETEC 30
Package price: from around 18,000 Euros
