Design
First time out!
What better way to test your brand new, highly complex, high performance 108-footer than to head from Cape Town to the St. Barths Bucket for a premier international superyacht regatta?
Yet Gelliceaux, the first Southern Wind 108 Smart Custom to leave the Cape Town yard, was overall winner of this year’s St. Barths Bucket. However, this yacht
T
was primarily conceived as a fast, safe and easily handled luxury cruiser to take her owners and their three children on voyages around the globe. In just the first few months after leaving the shipyard in Cape Town she sailed an impressive 12,000 miles, including a 7,500-mile non-stop delivery to Lanzarote. That voyage gave her owners sufficient confidence in their yacht’s reliability and blue water abilities to cross the Atlantic to the Caribbean for the winter season after only a two-week stop for maintenance in the Canary Islands. Gelliceaux then completed her first Atlantic crossing, an indisputable test the boat passed with flying colours, at an average speed of around 12kts. As standard, the Southern Wind 108
includes a number of performance- enhancing features that are far from universal on yachts of this size. The hydraulic transverse jib tracks, for instance, allow precise three dimensional control of the clew of the jib from an array of buttons next to the primary winches.
78 SEAHORSE
o win any superyacht regatta is a stunning achievement, especially when it’s at the first attempt on a brand new yacht.
‘We’ve fitted these on almost all of the
‘There’s no reason not to have perfect sail trim all the time’
last five or six boats we’ve built,’ says Southern Wind’s commercial manager Jeremy Peek, who raced as navigator on Gelliceaux at St. Barths. ‘Once you've sailed with transverse jib tracks, where you can just bring the car inboard to sail upwind or ease it out when reaching,’ he adds, ‘it's hard to go back to the limitations of an old school longitudinal track with inhaulers and outboard sheet leads.’ This ability
to control jib trim precisely at the touch of a button also feeds back to a better feel on the helm even in cruising mode, simply because inaccurate jib trim disturbs the balance of the sailplan. In addition, the Southern Wind arrangement facilitates regatta sailing with a small crew. As with most of today’s performance yachts, mainsail trim including vang, backstay and sheet can be controlled from the twin helm stations at the touch of a button. But it’s a game- changer for a single headsail trimmer to be able to tweak luff tension and the jib clew position using controls positioned right next to the jib
sheet winch. This means ‘there’s no reason not to have perfect sail trim all the time,’ says Peek. Another standard feature for all Southern Wind 108s is that they leave the yard with everything in place to run either pinhead or square top mainsails. This includes hard points in the bilges for hydraulic cylinders for backstay deflectors, as well as the associated attachment points on the rig and strong points on the transom to fit the purchase system for the runners. In addition, the winches behind the helm stations are far enough aft to be used for the backstays. The first two 108s both have pinhead mainsails, but this level of forethought helps to future-proof them and gives the owners more flexibility at a later date without the cost and disruption of re-engineering structural elements of the boat and rig. Both the first two 108s have an optional
The Southern Wind 108 Gelliceaux is optimised for both racing and cruising with a relatively small crew
ROB KAMHOOT
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