Bringing on the big breeze at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup
by International Maxi Association 11 Sep 23:44 BST
7-13 September 2025
The Maxi 1 fleet sets sail - Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup 2025 © IMA / Studio Borlenghi
Racing at Porto Cervo is usually at its best when both race committee and crews alike are wondering if conditions are sailable. With 'big Thursday' having been forecast from some way out, before leaving the dock for day four of competition at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, it seemed marginal whether the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda's race committee and PROs Stuart Childerley and Ariane Mainemare would be able to lay on racing. In the event, the two windward-leewards, scheduled for the today in the Rolex IMA Maxi Grand Prix World Championship, were unable to be held. Whereas, despite the northwesterly Mistral piping up to 22 knots and gusting to 26 at the start, racing did take place for all the remaining classes sailing coastal courses, once the committee boat was sufficiently holding in the 70m depth.
When racing did get under way, the fleet was sent south of Porto Cervo, away from La Maddalena and Bomb Alley and the strongest winds. Nonetheless conditions remained lively accompanied by a short sharp chop, making the day one where experience, well-rehearsed boat handling and courage paid dividends.
A prime demonstration of this was Karel Komárek's V, with a crew including numerous (Volvo) Ocean Race heroes such as tactician Ken Read, boat captain Jack Bouttell and many others. While Andrea Recordati's Wally 93 Bullitt was called OCS and had to return, the black 100 footer blasted out of today's reaching start, hitting speeds into the high 20s. V led into the leeward mark, to the north of Capo Figari, ahead of David M Leuschen and Chris Flowers' Galateia and Joost Schuijff's Leopard 3. However on the subsequent reach around the top of the islands of Soffi and Mortorio Leopard 3, one of the more proficient at offshore racing in this class, pulled into second. These positions were still in place when the race was finished prematurely at Victor mark, off Soffi, and subsequently remained unchanged under IRC corrected time with V winning by 5 minutes 13 second. Tilakkhana II didn't start while others suffered sail damage, Alessandro Del Bono's Capricorno having to perform a 'chase boat drop' at the first leeward mark rounding.
"How far this boat and programme have come in the last two and a half years is phenomenal," commented a delighted Ken Read, tactician on V. "Two years ago in those conditions, we'd have been holding on for dear life, and now we go out and there's no apprehension about doing anything. From an after-guard standpoint, you just get to put the boat in the right place rather than having to wonder if the crew can pull it off. They did..."
Similarly two years ago it was unlikely a Wallycento would have beaten the mighty offshore warhorse Leopard 3 in 25 knots. "When these boats were first made, they were pretty fragile," Read continued. "I can't thank enough the shore team and the design team and the engineering group... It was a team-credited win today of just confidence in the product. And well done to Stuart [Childerley] and the race committee for sending us out - it was exactly the right place to go sailing today."
Second-placed Leopard 3 is sailing here with a few new-comers, including Australians Chris Nicholson and two-time ILCA/Laser Olympic gold medallist Matthew Wearn. This is only Wearn's second race on Leopard 3 after winning the RORC's Cowes-Dinard-St Malo Race in the summer. "This has been amazing," says Wearn, who is strategist, sharing the afterguard with Nicholson, with whom he is sailing for the first time. "We seem to be gelling quite nicely - it's good to bounce off each other, but he has the final call."
Of today's race, Wearn added: "This boat loves the breeze. It was nice to stretch our legs. Everyone had a little bit on at certain points. The biggest one for us was probably just getting off to the start reasonably cleanly and obviously."
This was not the case on Galateia where they blew up two kites. With two days remaining V leads the Rolex IMA Maxi 1 Worlds by 3 points from Galateia.
Two boats in the extreme ends of the maxi length spectrum remain unbeaten so far at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup: Juan Ball's mighty Swan 115 Moat in the Super Maxi class and Riccardo De Michele's Vallicelli 78 H20, a perennial winner here, in Maxi 4, both of which have scored three straight bullets so far. Moat won today from Marcos Vivian's Wally 94 Inti and Marco Vogele's Inoui, while H20's time corrected out to 5 minutes 23 seconds ahead of Luigi Sala's Yoru and 11 minutes 29 seconds in front of Gerard Logel's Swan 601 @robas.
Despite respectable results @robas has not been having a good week and somehow managed to acquire some new ballast on Monday after she impaled herself on a rock - yet came away fairly unscathed. There was damage to her keel but none too serious and, remarkably, it was rectified in the water by a diver beating the keel back into shape once the rock had been removed. And then today: "It's the second day we've destroyed an A4," lamented Logel. "Fortunately we had an A5, as there was a bit too much wind." According to Logel his Swan 601 is a better windward-leeward boat but is this week is of course sailing coastal courses.
The closest competition was in Maxi 3 in which Dr Peter-Alexander Wacker's Baltic 68 Café Racer Ganesha was awarded a 1% penalty (for the boat captain driving), but still came out on top of former RORC Commodore James Neville's Botin 65 Artemis Bleu albeit by a mere six seconds. Yesterday's winner, Aldo and Elena Parisotto's Oscar 3 was third. By coincidence all three boats have tacticians who were helmsmen in the 2007 America's Cup: South African Mark Sadler on Ganesha, New Zealander Dean Barker on Artemis Bleu and Paolo Cian on Oscar 3. Remarkably these strong results came despite it only being the second event for Ganesha and the first for Artemis Bleu, whereas Oscar 3 is the defending champion here.
This year celebrating the 40th anniversary of Rolex's backing, the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup is organised by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda in conjunction with the International Maxi Association (IMA) and is the penultimate event of the 2025 IMA Mediterranean Maxi Inshore Challenge.
Follow the live tracking here.
More information on the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup here.
Full results available here.
For more on the International Maxi Association visit www.internationalmaxiassociation.com or see the 2025 IMA Yearbook.