Galateia and Django 7X claim Maxi World Championships
by International Maxi Association 13 Sep 2025 22:40 BST
7-13 September 2025
Galateia held a solid lead going into the last race, in which she nearly lost it - Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup © IMA / Studio Borlenghi
After a day blown out due to the Mistral, the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup concluded today with the Costa Smeralda in more clement mood; moderate to light conditions enabling crews to focus more on tactics and boat speed and less on survival and protecting equipment.
Joint organiser of the event with the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda (YCCS), the International Maxi Association (IMA) is the organisation formally tasked by World Sailing to oversee and nurture the sport of maxi yacht racing. This arrangement gives the IMA the unique right to hold world championships for maxi yacht classes. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Rolex's title sponsorship, this year the IMA made full use of this right and for the first time the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup featured two world championships: the Rolex IMA Maxi 1 and Rolex IMA Grand Prix World Championships. The former, first held in 2024, featured some of the longest and fastest racing yachts, from Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones' brand new Verdier 100 Magic Carpet E down to Pier Luigi Loro Piana's 80ft My Song. The latter was a resumption of the Mini Maxi/Maxi 72 World Championship, last formally held in 2018.
Both World Championship classes raced two windward-leeward today in 11-15 knots.
Today's first race for the Maxi Grand Prix classes saw Peter Harrison's Jolt, highest rated in the class, lead around the race track, but unable to save her time on Hap Fauth's Bella Mente, which comfortably won from Giovanni Lombardi Stronati's Django 7X and Jim Swartz's Vesper, the top four correcting out to within a minute. On the first upwind, in a port-starboard incident, Filip Balcaen's Balthasar clashed rigs with Sir Peter Ogden's Jethou, causing both to retire.
In race two Jolt was sufficiently ahead to win the race overall from Django 7X, but by only three seconds with Bella Mente, a further 21 seconds behind. This was enough to give Stronati's Django 7X the first Rolex IMA Maxi Grand Prix World Championship title by 2 points from Jolt and Bella Mente.
"It was a good job, by nice guys in a nice team on a good boat," said a delighted Stronati. "Everything went well, because we were not the fastest, in windward-leeward especially, but today it was our day. We have been lucky. I am very happy. Thanks to the guys who sailed the boat very well."
Their Botin Partners-designed wallyrocket 71 was launched earlier this year, and the Django team has done well to get their state of the art racer up to World Championship-winning form so quickly. The boat is ground-breaking - substantially lighter and with more water ballast than her rivals, giving her a strong edge downwind.
Tactician and project manager Vasco Vascotto added: "I feel very grateful to everybody for this - it's amazing and it's happened because we are a team. We are very happy for Giovanni and Francesca that gave us this opportunity. I think that today we put in our best performance of the year, especially in the last race, pushing with every single manoeuvre. In the end it came down to millimetres."
Main trimmer Chris Hoskins felt they had put in two excellent starts and sailed better upwind today than they ever had previously.
Past winner here, Hap Fauth said he had greatly enjoyed the racing: "It doesn't get any more exciting than this - it's as close as it can get. If we did everything right, we might have had an opportunity to win. But, hey, we came as close as we could."
The IMA Rolex Maxi 1 World Championship went to the wire with David M Leuschen and Chris Flowers' Galateia winning today's first race (when V suffered hydraulic issues). This nicely set her up with a four point lead over Joost Schuijff's Farr 100 Leopard 3 and Andrea Recordati's Wally 93 Bullitt tied going into the last race. However in this Galateia made it difficult for themselves, and it was only on second lap that she pulled up the fleet to finish fifth on corrected time. This left her winning but only on countback from Leopard 3, winner of the final race, just one point ahead of YCCS Commodore Andrea Recordati's Wally 93 Bullitt.
"The first race obviously went well. The second race didn't go so well," explained David M Leuschen. "At the first top mark, we were further behind than I've ever been in a race before. It was like we'd said 'oh, well, we've got all these spots to give. We'll be fine.' I think we were dead last by rating. But the boat seemed to be going fine. The crew were fine. So we said, 'let's get in the groove, see how many shifts can catch.' And the next three legs were pretty good..."
Overall he observed: "We have a great crew and since I brought in my partner [Chris Flowers], the boat gets raced more and as a result of that, the crew is that much better, and it really shows. In the coastal we blew up a spinnaker but in three and a half minutes we had another up."
Top scorer in Maxi 1 today was the defending champion Leopard 3, scoring a 2-1. "I did not look at other boats, I always listened and was 100% concentrated, which I wasn't always before," admitted Schuijff. "The first day we broke a spinnaker. Today we didn't make any mistakes - everybody else did." In short this was a wonderful outcome for an 18-year-old yacht, aided by new talent in her afterguard in Australian Olympians Chris Nicholson and Matthew Wearn.
The rest of the classes sailed a coastal course - an anti-clockwise lap of the La Maddalena archipelago in the northwesterly breeze.
Two boats won their classes with perfect scorelines. In the Super Maxi class, Juan Ball's Swan 115 Moat won ahead of Marcos Vivian's Wally 94 Inti and Marco Vogele's Briand 108 Inoui. They experienced around 8 knots at the start, peaking to 18 at the top of Bomb Alley.
Strategist Matías Bühler commented: "It was tricky today - we knew the wind was supposed to turn right, but with a left bend around the island. But this happened faster than the forecast and we had to choose if we went offshore to get to the new breeze or stay more with the fleet. We had a bit of an issue north of Caprera when we broke our J3, but the crew managed to change the sail fast. Then the reaching-downwind phase we managed well."
Similarly Riccardo De Michele's Vallicelli 78 H2O scored four bullets in Maxi 4 winning ahead of Luigi Sala's Vismara 62 Yoru and Gerard Logel's Swan 601 @robas. Incredibly, this is the seventh time H20 has won her class. "It was a good week - the wind was good for us," commented De Michele. And H2O's secret? "The crew is obviously very professional. For sure, the secret is having the core crew the same. And every year, we add small things to increase the performance and we work a lot on our manoeuvres."
In Maxi 3, Aldo and Elena Parisotto's Mylius FD Oscar 3 scored her second bullet today to win by two points from Massimiliano Florio's Southern Wind 82 Grande Orazio with Dr Peter-Alexander Wacker's Baltic 68 Café Racer Ganesha third.
"I'm very happy because we confirmed our first place in this class following on from last year, especially because this year, the class is more competitive. Upwind, the boat this year is going very fast. Today around the north of La Maddalena archipelago the wind built for us and we caught up a bit."
Prizes were awarded late this afternoon in the piazza outside of the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda. This included Oscar 3 which won the trophy for the highest placed IMA member.
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.