And now?
Tobias Kohl of Judel/Vrolijk has been looking into potential new solutions for Maxi owners who would like to have more than just a hollowed-out racing shell
What boat to do next? This question is one that we have often at the Judel/Vrolijk office. We have been hearing the same for decades, from owners, professional sailors and pretty much everyone else involved in the sailing industry. If you limit this ques- tion to a focus, for example, on racing in the Mediterranean and some of the classic 600-mile races like the Fastnet, Middle Sea Race and Caribbean 600 you can already quickly narrow the range to look at. In the past you still had a spread of
classes at grand prix level. Unfortunately those have seen little expansion (unlike the TP52 Super Series) for years – they never achieved a reasonable number of boats like the Maxi72s or Wally Centos. On the other hand, there has been quite a bit of talk in the past two or three years around the 24m range, but with a wide variety of uses and configuration. This prompted us to look into this size level more closely.
Size First of all there is the question of what size makes sense. The logical approach is to look at what rules are out there and, based on the size range under considera- tion, you quickly end up working around the size bands used by the International
48 SEAHORSE
Maxi Association (IMA). The IMA defines a Maxi yacht as a monohull with a mini- mum length of 18.29m. From this start point the yachts are divided into three divi- sions based on overall hull length (LH). The Mini Maxi range is 18.29-24.08m, the Maxi yacht 24.09-30.5m and the Super Maxi from 30.51m upwards. In the Mini Maxi group the most suc-
cessful boats until today are the Maxi72s. But these IRC designs did not suddenly appear one day – they have developed steadily over many years. The yacht that laid the foundations for the class was Niklas Zennström’s 72-footer Rán. She in turn was a development step from our slightly smaller previous design (by 6ft), Numbers, the step-up in size being based upon the simple idea that if you want to beat another opponent to the first mark it pays to have as long a boat as you can. Based on the fact that there were no pure (and successful) IRC racers bigger than 72ft this seemed the logical size to go for. Lots of other aspects of the Numbers
design were carefully refined and devel- oped. The end result was a new 72-footer that was winning races within weeks. However, the immediate success of Rán prompted obvious disappointment among owners of other yachts in the Mini Maxi division that were more at the cruiser-racer end of performance, and the IMA responded by splitting Mini Maxis into two divisions of Racer and Cruiser Racer. At the same time a new maximum length of 72ft was introduced for the Racer division. This upper limit in combination with
Rán’s continuing successes racing not just in the Mini Maxi class but in other IRC races (including back-to-back wins in the Fastnet) created a growing interest in
building more boats to this new size limit. With more boats of the same size the
optimisation game accelerated, of course, with boats getting lighter, with deeper draft along with more refined sail and rig pack- ages. To try to keep these developments under control the Maxi72 rule was intro- duced to tighten what was initially a rela- tively open IRC-based box rule. This framework lasted a few years and deliv- ered great racing, but the very high level of competitiveness and limited use for these boats (100 per cent pure raceboats with no concessions for cruising) prevented new owners stepping into the class. As a result, unfortunately 2018 was the year of the last Maxi72 World Championships. With the market clearly very limited for
a super-high level Maxi72 racer, optimised to near one-design standards and with the world’s finest professional sailors sailing her, we began to talk to other customers interested in building a yacht at this size about the option of having a more versa- tile boat that is good for racing but also allows daysailing with family and friends, or even the occasional weekend cruise. But could a more dual-purpose yacht
really be competitive on the racecourse up against the small handful of pure race- boats of the same size that are certainly not going away? We started a more scien- tific process of comparison to try to under- stand whether based on actual rating such a concept is even feasible. Within the size range in question and
with the aim of always winning the first beat, the obvious size for a concept com- parison – as well as being sure that such a concept cannot be overtaken by an even longer concept – is to place it bang in the upper corner of the fleet concerned. In this
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