Maxis Tarte Tropézienne (again)
At last we are getting back to near normal post-pandemic with most of the Maxi race fleet returning with full programmes. The IMA team have been very active supporting all the regattas with which we have become involved over the past few years and from which we have created several IMA Maxi Challenge series. Rather tentatively we introduced a Caribbean Maxi Challenge
this year even though we realised that it would be difficult for many teams to commit to getting there. The number of Maxis participating in the RORC/IMA Transatlantic Race in January was encouraging and many stayed on for at least one of the local regattas as well as the RORC Caribbean 600. We have now linked the 600, St Maarten Heineken Regatta, Les Voiles de St Barth and Antigua Week to make up the series. We expect it to flourish. PalmaVela in Mallorca returned with an encouraging turnout espe-
cially from the larger Wallys. The Portofino Regate de Primavera, brought back to life by the Yacht Club Italiano last year, was run again but not helped by rather difficult weather conditions. The new major event for this season was the first Maxi European
Championship, held in the bay of Naples with Sorrento replacing Capri as base for the inshore races. The series comprised an initial offshore
although we have found that IRC for the most part does an extremely good job despite its simplicity. At the Maxi Europeans we started the fleet together but, with rating TCCs ranging from 1.100 to 1.864, course choice was always going to be difficult, races often being too short for the fastest and too long for the slowest. In the end Terry Hui’s well-campaigned but almost vintage Wally
77 Lyra became the first ever IMA Maxi European Champion… though up until the last race, a tricky lap of Capri with large wind holes, it looked as if Peter Dubens’ NorthStar would take the title. The next event in our Mediterranean Offshore Challenge was the
brilliantly organised 151 Miglia-Trofeo Cetilar race which gets bigger year by year – as do the parties. The pre-race party this year was held in the ancient fortress of Livorno and the event closed with an outdoor seated dinner for 1,500 (sic) at Punta Ala Yacht Club. This time Furio Benussi’s 100-footer Arca SGR won the double,
line honours and overall. Among her crew was Roberto Lacorte, one of the founders of the event whose family company Pharmanutra is its title sponsor. Further excitement after the finish in Punta Ala was the official launching of Lacorte’s spectacular Flying Nikka. This 60ft Mark Mills creation flies on a foiling system similar to the latest Cup boats, but the design also has a conven- tional bulb keel and is planned to be offshore capable with records in sight. Right now it is difficult to see if this is the way the
world will go but Roberto is to be congratulated on a brave and exciting project that is attracting great inter- est. (While presenting something of a challenge for the rating offices who have enough trouble coping with planing and non-planing boats, let alone flying ones!) Following soon afterwards, the 69th Rolex Giraglia
was able post-Covid to return to Saint-Tropez for the inshore component, followed by the offshore to Genoa… of course via the Giraglia Rock. The Maxis raced out in the Bay of Pampelonne, undisturbed by the smaller boats and aided by the new electronic marks which open up more course possibilities, as on this shore it is always difficult to anchor conventional marks because the water gets very deep very quickly. Winning on corrected time for the second consecutive year was the Felci 61 Itacentodue skippered by owner Adriano Calvini’s grandson. Our latest project is to try to develop a framework
Ten years of growing interest in Maxi yacht racing has slowly driven up ‘average’ performance across most classes and not just the pure racers like the Maxi72s. In fact, observing those custom 72s disappear over the horizon prompted many owners to press for new dual-purpose superyachts which sail much better than some of their painfully ponderous predecessors. Morgana is the newest Maxi to leave Southern Wind in South Africa; designed by Reich/Pugh, the 100-footer has a magnificent interior by Nauta yet performs like a dervish on all points of sails
race, the popular Tre Golfi (which traverses three bays and the islands of Ponza and Li Galli before finishing in Capri), followed by four days of inshore racing. An excellent entry of 25 Maxis all started together to enable scoring for an overall winner but the classes were also sub-divided based on performance as judged by IRC rating. Over the years we have used various different methods to sub-
divide the IMA fleet fairly. Defining sub-classes by hull length and subjective judgements of racer, racer/cruiser, cruiser/racer does not cut it. Recently we have used a formula based on length and rating for performance bands, but saw no real benefit over simple IRC bands so we are now back on that track. This is intended to remove endless arguments as to whether a boat has cruising capa- bility or not, but this subject will be a bone of contention for as long as we go to sea in ships. The former Maxi72s have all left their orig- inal box rule, many having grown longer and/or deeper, but nonethe- less they remain a group that have been maximally optimised. Unfor- tunately as a result no other Maxis wish to race with them. All rating systems still come to grief racing very different boats together fairly. Within the Maxi fleet we too have this problem,
34 SEAHORSE
to encourage high-performance Maxi multihulls to race together more fairly. The fit with the IMA is a good one as most of the former Orma 60s are now privately owned, while among the owners of high-performance cruising catamarans, as exemplified by the Gunboats, there is an increasing desire to race. We held a meeting at the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda
before the Giorgio Armani Superyacht Regatta, where last year the YCCS trialled a multihull class. The meeting was well attended by owners, sailors, designers and builders from Europe and the USA, and demonstrated an enthusiasm to make this initiative work. We followed this with another meeting for more thoroughbred trimarans, mainly the MOD 70s, these having slightly different requirements! We are keen to establish consensus between the various parties
which may end up with a new IMA multihull division if enough common ground is established. It is certainly an interesting development – many past and present Maxi monohull owners are now interested in experiencing a higher-octane side of sailing, offering speed, stability and, in the case of the Maxi cats, considerable comfort. And as a final sad footnote it is clear that as much as we would
like the pandemic to go away it still has not. Boats and people have had to withdraw suddenly from regattas having tested positive. Not confined to crews either, this scribe, his wife and various other members of the IMA team all got a rather different ‘present from Sorrento’. Fortunately all recovered quite rapidly. Andrew McIrvine, IMA Secretary General
q
INGRID ABERY
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132
