RORC Novel
Accepting an invitation to do my first Transatlantic crossing on a MOD 70 trimaran was made in a split second when offered by owner Peter Cunningham at the pre-race party of the Rolex Middle Sea Race. However, the afterthought of whether this was a wise decision came as I realised closer to the time the implications for an offshore multihull novice. Notwithstanding my lack of experience in these flying machines,
it is, however, just another boat; yes, it can capsize but any thought of such a disaster was banished when I met our extremely experienced crew. They included the fastest man on water, Paul ‘sky rocket’ Larsen, Jonny Malbon, who has thousands of offshore miles under his belt, and offshore multihull veteran Fraser Brown. All the crew had sailed PowerPlay before in her previous guise as Concise X, including her skipper Ned Collier-Wakefield who continued in this role on the renamed boat. Ned was a product of the late Kit Hobday’s Bear of Britain Farr
52 youth programme, as were tactician Tom Dawson and boat captain Martin Watts, and these three had progressed through the generosity
For the first three days we were in sight of each other with Maserati
slowly pulling ahead on speed… before PowerPlay took the initiative on windshifts and put us back in the lead. For the first 24 hours we knew we would be beating into a ‘weak’ front as we tacked over the top of the Canary Islands, but the wind got up to 27kt during the first night and with an upwind speed of 17kt in the confused seas it was a baptism of fire for both the owner Peter and myself. After passing north of Las Palmas both boats dived south for the
trade winds, with Soldini sailing faster but at higher angles – pro- ducing a smaller VMG advantage than we expected. Then on day 3 sailing at around 18kt we ran smack into an enormous cable attached to a float with a light, probably the remnants of an ocean trawl net. Fortunately it brought us to a relatively gentle halt like the deceleration cables on an aircraft carrier slow a landing jet. It took a while to remove but luckily there was little damage to the boat. Once in the trades it was VMG sailing all the way to Grenada.
These are apparent wind machines, with the apparent wind angle in the low 50s and the true wind angle around 138-140°. Steering the boat is just like sailing a perfor- mance dinghy using the huge trade wind swell to accelerate from 20-22kt to over 30kt, but never getting so deep that the boat gets stuck in the wave and you wipe off your precious apparent wind. The mainsheet was never eased as
on a monohull and the traveller was always on the centreline. At times the boat seemed like an F1 car accidentally doing the Paris Dakar Rally and without brakes but at other times she surprised me by being incredibly manageable and docile when required. To check the gennaker tack strop we
bore away to 150-160 true wind, noth- ing was eased and the boat slowed to 10kt and just sat there as a stable plat- form allowing the crew to easily manage the lowering of the gennaker, the check, change the strop and re-hoist. Down below these boats are like an
Giovanni Soldini’s Maserati crew celebrate beating their rival MOD 70 PowerPlay into Grenada, boosted by a series of modifications to their standard MOD platform including the addition of foils. Soldini had a long and successful shorthanded career before switching to the Maserati record-chasing programme, winning the solo Around Alone on an Open 60 before switching to the Class40 where he won a string of big races including the Transat Jacques Vabre and Transat
of Tony Lawson’s youth support, gaining huge numbers of offshore miles on Concise Class40 as well as the Concise X MOD 70. If you take the owner Peter Cunningham and me out of the
equation the boat was run by six crew on a rolling three-hour watch system with each steering for an hour at a time. Three people were in the watch system, one on standby, one trimming and one steering with a rotation every hour. Everyone steering was a revelation to me, but it was the key to our performance as full concentration was required to steer the tri well at high apparent wind speeds in the constant spray. The speed load was, therefore, shared by all the crew with everyone aware of the difficulties and dangers involved in racing these high-velocity machines over open oceans. What made the crossing so exciting was a match race against
Giovanni Soldini’s modified MOD 70 Maserati. Soldini has added large foils to make his boat fly in some conditions – when she does the resultant speed differential over PowerPlay explodes. However, the often confused seaway during this crossing made this difficult and I assume sometimes dangerous.
62 SEAHORSE
express train on steroids. At 23kt a high-pitched whine emits from the cen- treboard, reaching ear-piercing levels at 30kt+. And it never stops. The boat also has a strange movement, as you would expect from two hulls competing with each other, and vibrates and shud- ders at high speed – unnerving to start with but you soon get used to it.
The living accommodation is cramped but perfectly suited to a
small crew and, unlike on the new wide monohulls, you don’t have far to fall. You can also brace yourself between the sides of the boat which at water level are only a few feet apart. Sleeping is normally done feet first (always) in front of the mast bulkhead where the overall movement of the boat is the least (as is the ventilation!). Our tactics were to stay close to Maserati but always to the north
as we neared the southern layline to Grenada. This plan worked as we received a private 20° shift in our favour for the last 150nm, reducing their lead to just 45 minutes at the end. The arrival at Camper and Nicholson’s Port Louis Marina in the
early hours of Saturday morning, after a 6½-day crossing, was extra special with the ‘meet and greet’ team from Grenada Tourism and Port Louis Marina, the RORC race and media team and the crew of Maserati celebrating our finish… and our win on handicap! It was also the first time in a week I switched on my phone. Highly
cathartic. I recommend it. Eddie Warden-Owen, CEO
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Club page
ARTHUR DANIEL
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