Contents February 2019 FEATURES
4 Snorkel time JEREMIE BEYOU
30 Floating butler Bar-keeping and pre-preg… ROB WEILAND
32 The basics Pragmatic thinking followed through with confident application is paying good dividends in Maxi world. ANDREW MCIRVINE
Oops Maxi yacht maxi problem, as the spinnaker pole appears the wrong side of the mainsail during a Kenwood Cup race in Hawaii in 1988. In 2019 there are fewer race Maxis than 30 years ago but the Maxi fleet is in a much stronger position with a fascinating range of big yachts that regularly turn up to take each other on with varying degrees of seriousness. There are still a decent number of racing designs but they are now too spread out around the world to often enjoy the boat-on-boat battles of the IOR giants; the exception are the ultra-refined Maxi72s – which enjoy competition an order of magnitude closer than anything else above TP52 size. Curiously the world’s racing 100-footers only really get together for the Fastnet and Sydney Hobart – the latter usually boiling down to Comanche (heavy-air boat) vs Wild Oats (light-air/running boat). Meanwhile, the main Maxi fleet is enjoying regular action at Mediterranean and Caribbean events, including a busy worlds each September in Sardinia, with boats getting bigger, faster and more complex every year. Comfort will always be the main driver of superyacht development, but increased access to good racing in nice places has driven huge improvements in design, construction, equipment and performance, a lot of which steadily filters down to the less exotic level. The Maxis also provide an arena where developments in racing technology can be tested to greater extremes of reliability; racing around the world is one thing, but who 15 years ago would have believed that today a good proportion of even the heaviest superyachts can be seen putting their trust in ‘fragile’ carbon rigging? Certainly not the insurance underwriters, we imagine…
COVER: Gilles Martin-Raget INSET: Yvan Zedda
36 Extraordinaire
The exception that proves the rule? Whatever the underlying reasons no modern raceboat has proved as enduringly successful, and as enduring, as Idec Sport. JOCELYN BLERIOT, VINCENT LAURIOT PREVOST and XAVIER GUILBAU
42 A whole new language Following the 2017 Cup Artemis took a major swerve and once the die was cast for AC36 there became no looking back. JOHN NICHOLLS and JAMES BOYD
46 Brazil 1-2 Wowza… this kid ZARIF is hot. Drops in to race the 2018 Star Worlds and wins, rolls on to the Star Sailors League Finals in Nassau and wins again. JAMES BOYD looks up from his parasol
48 Champion JUD SMITH is the (mostly) gentle giant of one design keelboat sailing… racing and sailmaking. And in 2018 he moved aft in the J/70 to knock his previous skipper off his perch. CAROL CRONIN
52 Details The last 36 hours of ALEX THOMSON’s Route du Rhum campaign got more than its fair share of airplay… though for all the wrong reasons. But the story was not as cut and dried as it looked to some of those observing. FRED AUGENDRE
54 A quiet year? Olympic gold medallist and Artemis America’s Cup helm NATHAN OUTTERIDGE certainly expected 2018 to play out more gently… There you go! ANDY RICE talks foils… and the future
REGULARS
8 Commodore’s letter STEVEN ANDERSON
11 Editorial ANDREW HURST
14 Update A welcome return to Cup world and full focus on the new (old) boat (watch this space). Plus things that go crunch… during the day. JACK GRIFFIN, TERRY HUTCHINSON and NEIL HARVEY
20World news Bits of boat floating everywhere… that ‘Ultimate’ question, FRANCIS heads back to sea (obviously), turning things inside out with DANIEL ANDRIEU and GUILLAUME VERDIER, ROB SHAW and GREG ELLIOTT back cutting wood again, the unstoppable GLENN ASHBY, plus BARRY CARROLL catches up on some
much missed soapbox time. PATRICE CARPENTIER, IVOR WILKINS,
BLUE ROBINSON, DOBBS DAVIS
28 Rod Davis Objective>Gameplan>Execution Keep it in the right order and it’ll work out fine
34 ORC – A place in the sun … and you also get to take along your favourite toys (and pals) to play with. SHAUN CARKEEK
57Seahorsebuild table
– Something different This one surely is? TOMMY GONZALEZ 60Seahorse regatta calendar
62 RORC news – Novel EDDIE WARDEN-OWEN drops the lead
63 TechStreet
95 Sailor of the Month Put these two on a boat and it’s time to give up
The control of heat and pressure is vastly more sophisticated today but the fundamentals of using an autoclave to cure composite structures – of wood or carbon – has changed little since the 1950s. Using technology developed in 1942 for the wooden Mosquito night fighter these workers at Fairey Aviation (later Marine) are removing a completed Huntress hull from the autoclave in 1959 (right) and putting in a 28-foot Huntsman lower hull-shell in 1960 (left). Many of these hulls are still good today (ask the editor)
TWISS/BLUNDON
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