The next revolution

We consider the new breed of 60-75ft pocket maxis and look at the latest, Hap Fauth's Reichel Pugh 68 Bella Mente

Quietly a new revolution is taking place in big boat yachting with the arrival en masse of the ‘pocket maxis’. These boats are 60-75ft in length, race under IRC and neatly include the new generation STP65s.

In addition to Rosebud, the STP65s are soon to be six - including Jim Swartz’s recently launched Moneypenny (also here in Newport), Container for Udo Schutz, a new Reichel-Pugh boat in build at Cooksons for Dario Ferrari, owner of the Farr 40 Cannonball, plus two others.

As previously reported Reichel-Pugh have a fat order book for non-STP65 pocket maxis. They include Neville Crichton’s latest Alfa Junior, one of several new boats of this type heading to Sardinia for the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, such as Andres Soriano’s brand new Mark Mills 68 Alegre (which may debut this weekend at the UK IRC Nationals) and Dan Meyers’ Alinghi-crewed Judel Vrolijk 66, Numbers . However the newest boat to be heading down this same route is Hap Fauth’s new R-P 68 Bella Mente, which among a spate of launchings recently just squeaks in as the newest boat down at Newport Shipyard this week.

Owner, John ‘Hap’ Fauth is founder and Chairman of Churchill Companies, that has diverse interests from manufacturing and distributing parts for tractors and planes through to having its own equity fund. We first came across Fauth during the Rolex Transatlantic Race in which he campaigned his luxurious 116ft Ted Fontaine-design Whisper. Since then it seems he has caught the bug for racing having acquired the successful J-V IMS 66 Sotto Voce and taking her to a Bermuda Race win in 2006.

“I bought the old Sotto Voce knowing it was a crossover boat as I didn’t know if I want to do this or not,” 63 year old Fauth admitted to thedailysail of his move into big boat racing. “There is nothing you can do to that hull shape to get it rated fairly for IRC, plus it had runners and a spinnaker pole and other stuff. It was just a cumbersome boat to sail. We had some good fortune. We were first to finish in Bermuda in that boat, by a fairly good margin and then I gifted it to the Merchant Marine Academy. It is a fun boat and it was terrific for me and they love it.” Fauth was overjoyed to hear that the boats’ new crew had just won their first race.


New England Boatwork's Tom Rich (left) with Hap Fauth

During his time on Sotto Voce Fauth had bitten the bullet and agreed to get Reichel Pugh to design him a new boat. He says they started down the STP65 route but soon opted for the freedom of being outside of this rule. “A rule within a rule, by definition has limitations in terms of optimising in this size range. I didn’t like that,” he says, adding that despite this, the STP65 class has a bright future in his view. Reichel Pugh meanwhile had just carried out an R&D program on the STP65 Moneypenny before returning to the tank in Newfoundland to look at the 65-70ft size range for IRC for the new Bella Mente.

New England Boatworks undertook the construction of the new 68 footer, building her in tandem with the Mills 68 Alegre. Impressively no cost was spared - while it is now possible to build female tooling directly, a male plug was made from which carbon fibre female tooling was taken. As a result Bella Mente literally required no filler for fairing (as well as there being some nice tooling available, should anyone else wish to buy a state of the art R-P IRC 68 sistership). According to NEB’s Tom Rich they have also come up with a new way of joining hull to deck. “We build the hull and deck join in one piece and it is stuck together inboard the sheer. It is better structurally and it is pretty light.”

Another reason Fauth didn’t go down the STP 65 route was that he has his own program for his new steed. He will be steering his new boat and holds up Dutch MedCup winner and one design specialist Peter de Ridder as his role model. “De Ridder did it successfully,” says Fauth. “I have been fortunate business-wise so that I am in position at this stage in my life to do that. If we have to practice every day, I’ll practice every day.”

While Fauth steers, the 18 or so Bella Mente crew is almost all pros including a diverse mix from Star and AC sailor Andy Horton to Tom Burnham, Scott Vogel, Alex Watson, Sean Doogie Couvreux, etc.

Fauth may have only bought his first big race boat recently, but this gives the wrong impression of his ability. Prior to getting a ‘proper job’ he spent most of his teenage years sailing in Long Island Sound and subsequently worked in sail lofts. “I grew up sailing on all kinds of one designs,” he says. He was even Captain of Georgetown University Sailing Team. “Then I went to work in New York and was an enthusiastic amateur. At that time we took pride in being amateurs and being competitive.” He has sailed the Bermuda Race (the US east coast’s equivalent of the Fastnet) countless times, the first when he was just 16.

With Fauth’s desire to follow in Peter de Ridder’s footsteps, so Bella Mente will be racing virtually non-stop, inshore and offshore, with an ambitious program including the world’s classic 500 mile offshore races - the Rolex Fastnet Race, Sydney-Hobart, Middle Sea, with next weekend’s start of the Bermuda Race being first on the agenda. Despite this program Fauth still reckons the boat is 70-30 or 60-40% orientated inshore-offshore, indicating that there is a big inshore program in store for the boat too.

From Reichel-Pugh’s point of view the boat’s program obviously dictated the design and being more offshore-orientated Bella Mente has been given more reaching ability and a more powerful hull shape than some of the other pocket maxis. The sections aft for example are very full, similar to R-P's TP52 hulls.

“It is the newer generation hull shape, pushing some big beams,” says Reichel Pugh’s Tony Beale (Reichel Pugh, for the first time, have unleashed a posse on Newport this week, in addition to the ubiquitous Jim Pugh). “A lot of this east coast racing is more offshore, distance racing, so it is more designed for reaching which obviously pushes your beam out just to get more power to carry more sail.”

Obviously we have already seen the big sterns on R-P’s TP52s, but Beale says on Bella Mente the chine is more aggressive and extends further forward. Significantly, compared to an STP 65, Bella Mente has no lifting keel (as Numbers also has) and, with no restrictions, R-P have hiked up the bowsprit length and the downwind sail area.

Given its future offshore one of the odd aspects of Bella Mente’s design is that she has flush decks. In ye olde days of offshore sailing, flush decks were considered the way to go allowing green water a clear path down the deck from bow to stern. However times have changed and for example the latest generation Open 60s are a step away from being deck saloon boats. In fact Bella Mente has different set-ups for inshore and offshore and for the latter there is a main hatch hood offering a modicum of protection (not shown in the photos). She also has reasonably high freeboard for her size. However it is unquestionably going to be a wet ride for her crew.

A feature of the new IRC pocket maxis is that they are purely A-sail boats, with bowsprits and free of spinnaker tackle, thus improving their rating. The Southern Spars rig on the boat has split topmast backstays (allowing a bigger roach to the main) and swept-back spreaders, the whole deal held up with Southern’s Element C6 rigging, which, if the current crop of boats in Newport is anything to go by, is becoming standard fit on race boats of this type.

The deck layout is otherwise simple (as you can see from the photos on the next pages). She has twin wheels and three pedestals driving the Harken winch package. A few lines run below decks, but all the lines run aft from the mast along the deck. Interestingly down below she is different to the Judel Vrolijk-design Numbers, with a more open plan with more minimalist ring frames used. However the most special feature of her accommodation are the murals.



While post Bermuda Race, such boats as Numbers and Moneypenny, are heading to Cork Week immediately after, Bella Mente is heading back to Newport where she will compete in the New York YC Race Week in July, before being put on a Dockwise ship transporter bound for the Med and the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, followed by the Rolex Middle Sea Race. From here Fauth says he hasn’t decided whether the boat will head for Florida or down under for the Hobart race.

And Bella Mente will not be alone. While Dan Meyers’ will be moving Numbers around the world followed by Meteor, his impressive new Royal Huisman 170ft schooner, Bella Mente will have Fauth’s faithful Whisper as support ship.

So finally why is the pocket maxi class getting such an impressive turn-out at present?

As an industry insider Tom Rich (who has now moved on building Tom Hill’s new Titan, a 75ft R-P design) shares his view: “There are a lot of people looking at where to go. The 65 rule created some interested. It is nice that we have a bunch of boats of a similar size. The 65 rule has a number of potential draw backs, if you are not into class racing it is tough to do in that box. But the TP52 class is what inspired this whole thing. If you are not going to play that game you can play this game.”

But Hap Fauth provides a more first hand perspective: “The program size is manageable versus a maxi. The dollar dimension of a maxi program is more than twice this…maybe as much as three times this. We are moving around two containers and a trailer and the maxis have four or five. And 18-20 people around the buoys - you can manage that. And they are fun to sail.” Already despite being fresh out of the box, Bella Mente has already touched 30 knots, a speed well outside the realms of their IMS boat.

Fauth concludes, reading our mind: “It is going to be as exciting as hell.”

More photos on the following pages....