Maxi classes wide open going into final day of Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez
by James Boyd / International Maxi Association 2 Oct 22:18 BST
26 September - 4 October 2026
With a day lost due to a failing wind yesterday off the Baie de Pampelonne, today Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez's maxi race committee sent the Maxi 100 and Maxi Grand Prix racers (combined here in the Maxi 1 class) off on a 28-mile coastal southwest towards Cavalaire-sur-Mer, while Maxi 2, 3 and 4 for the first time raced two windward-leewards with the three Js. Once again this took place in a light easterly but with a much-subdued version of Tuesday's evil sea state.
Organised by the Société Nautique de Saint Tropez, Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez is the sixth and final event of the International Maxi Association's 2026 Mediterranean Maxi Inshore Challenge, the winner of which will be decided tomorrow.
Adequate races have been sailed that discards now apply. Going into the last day, two boats are tied at the top of the J Class and Maxi 1, the latter racing for the Edmond de Rothschild Trophy. Meanwhile one point separates the leaders in Maxi 2 and 3 and potentially the top four could still challenge Maxi 4 leader Dehler 60 Blue Oyster, being raced here by Alessandro Aita.
The race format swap brought some fresh faces to the leaderboard. In the coastal Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones' 100ft Magic Carpet e thundered down the Côte d'Azur coast, its endless beaches punctuated by rocky headlands, and back, to claim line honours. However Karel Komárek's 100ft V scored her second consecutive bullet on corrected time. Again Sir Peter Ogden's 77ft Jethou sailed a solid race correcting out to second, leaving her and V tied for the overall Maxi 1 lead.
Third home was Wendy Schmidt's 85ft Deep Blue. According to tactician Rob MacMillan their first beat was anticipating the unusual starboard weather mark rounding (before heading off down the coast). "That added a bit of spice. So we set up at the weather end of the line to give us a little protection on starboard tack."
The coastal race demanded total accuracy in sail handling in the gusts and shifts. "Today, the stars definitely are the crew," continued MacMillan. "The amount of sail changes and the complexity of the sail changes was intense. Ours were flawless: We had jibtops, peels to kites multiple times at different angles. It was fun from a tactician's standpoint...and fun watching the crew execute.
"Wendy did a great job today. It was tricky because there was pressure up and down and there were some close crosses, but she did a great job. Saint-Tropez is a wonderful place: great sailing, great competition and some of the most stunning scenery."
Pascale Decaux's 100ft Tilakkhana II was penalised for being over the line within a minute of the start gun while the brand new 76 footer North Star III received a standard penalty for a stand-in replacing owner Peter Dubens on the helm.
Both North Star III and the Lizz Flowers-steered 100ft Galateia had intense post-race debriefs after 'technical issues' caused their kites to drop in the water with costly consequences.
"We had a really good start - won the pin, and then we tacked relatively early on the left shift," explained North Star III's tactician Nick Rogers. "The forecast was for a big right shift, so that was playing on everyone's minds. The leading boats came from the right-hand side but there was a massive 30° right shift, by which point we'd got ourselves far enough ahead that we crossed and were ahead at the top."
But while rounding the leeward mark off Cavalaire-sur-Mer, peeling from the spinnaker to the Code 0, they dropped the former overboard after the drop string broke, taking them a costly five minutes to recover the sail. A similar, even more costly incident befell Galateia dropping her to 12th - now her discard.
An equally tight battle is taking place in Maxi 2 between Terry Hui's Wally 77 Lyra and Luciano Gandini's Mylius 80 FD Twin Soul B. Today Twin Soul B scored a 1-2 to Lyra's 2-1. After discards Lyra is ahead by a point with Marcos Vivian's Wally 94 Astra 1 (ex-Inti) two points adrift in third.
"Today staying clear of traffic and doing simple manoeuvres was key," commented Lyra's Peter Wibroe, match racer and round the world race sailor. "We had two good starts and we have really managed to have Terry, our driver, locked on improving our straight line speed." They won today's second race by just nine seconds.
Twin Soul B's tactician and former America's Cup skipper Francesco Bruni said of their day: "We had a very good battle. In the second race we were leading but we made a little mistake being a bit shy of the lay line and had to do two tacks which lost us 20 seconds."
In Maxi 3, Dario Castiglia's Baltic 65 RE/MAX One2 got off to an ambitious start, tacking on to port and crossing the fleet. However this only left them in fourth place with today's winners once again being Lasse Petterson's Mylius 18E35 Why Not, which scored a 2-2, Luigi Sala's Vismara 62 Yoru which scored a 1-3 and former IMA President Benoît de Froidmont's Wally 60 Wallyño, a 3-1.
Wallyño's tactician Cedric de Pouligny commented: "It was good to do some windward-leewards. In the first one we got a medium start, a bit far from the line but made a good recovery. In the second, we had a bad start but managed to stay in contact and on the second beat, we caught up Why Not - they made a small mistake and we were just ahead of them at the second top mark. But they caught up on us again. It was really close." Wallyño won by just 11 seconds on corrected.
After Blue Oyster won Monday and Tuesday's coastal races, in today's windward-leewards the Dehler 60 posted a 2-3. Winner of today's first race was Juerg Schneider's Swan 65 ketch Saida. "It was a great day with two nice races, good wind, perfect team - the crew did nice manoeuvres," said Schneider's who won here four years ago. "The name Saida means 'the happy one' [in Arabic], and today she really was a happy one. These wind conditions are not too bad for us - 10 to 15 knots is perfect."
Race two went to Enzo Pellizzaro's defending champion here, the Solaris 60 Crazy Diamond.
In the Js, Niklas Zennstrom's Svea won both races today leaving her tied with Peter Harrison's Rainbow. Read the full report here.
Racing continues tomorrow with Maxi 1 sailing windward-leewards and the rest off on a coastal race. At the conclusion of racing, the winner of the International Maxi Association's 2026 Mediterranean Maxi Inshore Challenge will be awarded their prize. The final awards ceremony for the maxis is scheduled for tomorrow at 1800 at Saint-Tropez's 'Village des Voiles."
See the latest results from the IMA MMIC