Crichton goes Mini Maxi

We have a look at the new Alfa Romeo 3

Excessive possibly, but Neville Crichton is in Porto Cervo for the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup with not one, but two boats.

Sadly, given that there are newer examples such as ICAP Leopard and Speedboat charging around the high seas, the only grand prix 100ft super maxis here at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup are Alfa Romeo 2 and George David’s heavily campaigned Rambler (Crichton’s previous Alfa).

As Crichton puts it: “We are disappointed they are not here. I rang Mike Sanderson ( Speedboat) several times and I rang Slade ( Leopard) to try and get him here. I tried to get Hasso ( Morning Glory) here and all the big boats here and I think we would have had a good regatta. Certainly when Speedboat has her right day she’ll be very very fast, but I think round the buoys we’d give her a good run.”

Perhaps next year? At present the Alfa Romeo supermaxi is up for sale, but Crichton is considering hanging on to her, because the International Maxi Association are making arrangements so that next year the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup may not be just be another regatta, but a Maxi World Championship… “If that is the case we’ll keep the the boat and bring it here and we should be pretty competitive,” says Crichton.

If all the maxi owners were seeing eye to eye and pitching up on the same race courses, then the new Alfa Romeo 3, as she is known, probably wouldn’t have come into existence. Instead she is the first of Crichton big boats in recent years not to be a super maxi, and is part of the rapidly expanding fleet of ‘Mini Maxis’. Already this represents the biggest class here in Sardinia with 19 boats entered, ranging from Guido Miani’s Grand Soleil 56 ADS Glen (technically outside of the Mini Maxi size range of 60-80ft, but hey this is Italy) all the way up to Michael Cotter’s Reichel Pugh 78 Whisper and the Nauta 80 Acaia Cube of Claudio Amendola.

LOA is becoming increasingly important in this fleet. At 69ft Alfa Romeo 3 falls into the middle of the Mini Maxi size range - slightly larger than the highest rated and most competitive boats such as Numbers (being campaigned here by Ernesto Bertarelli and an Alinghi crew), Andy Soriano’s new Mills 68 Alegre and the two STP65s Moneypenny and Rosebud/Team DYT. Compared to Numbers on 1.514 and the two STPs on 1.516, Alfa Romeo 3's IRC rating is a substantially higher 1.571.

The theory goes that in being longer Alfa Romeo 3 should get her around the race course ahead of the competition in clear air. So surely the next kick-ass Mini Maxi to come along will be 70ft, or even better why not go straight in at 80ft?

However Numbers is proving that to win at the Mini Maxi game it is not all about length (God bless IRC!). As Crichton puts it: “You can see what’s happening here - Numbers is winning by a country mile and they’re not bigger, they are smaller. We have to get the boat performing better to its rating which we will be by next season. It is certainly not cheque book racing - we are racing against 60 footers and 80 footers. If we thought that, we would have built an 80 footer. We don’t think that.”

But there is consensus on the dock that Numbers does have a particularly kind rating. Yes, she has been sailing longer and has most of the Alinghi sailing team on board, including on this occasion Ed Baird. But while the Alfa Romeo 2 CBTF supermaxi is charging around the race course here in Sardinia winning line honours with Crichton on board and Ben Ainslie and Adrian Stead calling the shots, so who better to have handed Alfa Romeo 3 over to than Torben Grael, who is campaigning the new boat here with his Ericsson Racing Team crew for some race training prior to the Volvo Ocean Race’s Alicante in-port race rapidly approaching at the beginning of next month. Is the Alinghi crew really that much better than Grael and his posse of Ericsson sailors or even Moneypenny, where in Sardinia there is not only Paul Cayard and Gavin Brady calling the shots, but also Luna Rossa skipper Francesco de Angelis?

Another benefit for Crichton is that compared to a supermaxi, the 69 footer is a lot cheaper to run. As he puts it: “Less people and you don’t have to have a computer expert every time you leave the dock.” And it is a much much simpler bit of kit. For starters she is a ‘regular yacht’ with no canting keel or CBTF (as the supermaxi has) or water ballast (as Rambler has). Unlike the Alfa supermaxi she also has conventional grinders and none of this push button winch nonsense requiring the engine to be running all the time. But like the big boat she too has a bowsprit, no pole and flies no symmetric kites.

Like Crichton’s other maxis, the new Alfa Romeo 3 is a Reichel-Pugh design built by McConaghys north of Sydney. She was project managed by Wade Morgan who has been with Crichton on and off (being a stint with Areva Challenge during the last Cup) throughout all his supermaxi projects.

With the new boat Crichton was primarily looking for a Mediterranean ‘day racer’ and for this reason the new Alfa Romeo 3 has no lifting keel, that is a feature of Numbers and the STPs. As Morgan explains – while a lifting keel is essential on boats of this size in the US, there is no need for it on a Med boat. Aside from the cost and complication this also saves around 500-1000kg.

After leaving McConaghys Alfa Romeo 3 was not sailed in Australia prior to being shipped and aside from the delivery across prior to this regatta she had only sailed five days out of Antibes. Crichton admits that she is perhaps a little too new to be racing at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, but thought that they would learn so much bringing her here, it would be an opportunity not to be missed.

Design-wise on deck Alfa Romeo 3 reminds us of Patches 2 with powerful aft sections, her wide beam on deck carried all the way aft from the chainplates to the stern. Compared to Patches however she is also relatively beamy at the waterline aft and has a more pronounced chine.

While Wade Morgan says her hull is pretty similar to another of the new Reichel Pugh boats, Hap Fauth’s 68 footer Bella Mente , she has noticeably more beam than the R-P STP 65 Moneypenny.

Performance-wise she is supposed to be an all-rounder but as has seemed to be the case with Moneypenny and Bella Mente too, to date she has proved to be a weapon off the wind, but has been underperforming upwind. However as Morgan says: “We are significantly better already than Bella Mente was in the same fleet. For us that is reassuring.” They are improving rapidly. On day one here they were 11 minutes behind the form boat, Numbers, on corrected while yesterday they were just 4.5 minutes adrift.

While loosely termed a ‘day boat’ Wade Morgan reckons that structurally she is very much more robust than a TP52 but less so than a VO70 - as he puts it: fine for something like the Rolex Middle Sea race and 70% of Hobart races. “We were going upwind in 20 knots yesterday and we came in with one thing on the job list.”

From Wade Morgan’s perspective as project manager, the scale of the new Alfa is also ideal as it means that you can buy off the shelf gear (which often isn’t the case for the big boat). The Harken winch package for example is the same at the V5 Cup boats and is therefore both state of the art and highly reliable.

Performance-wise they are at clocking around 10 knots upwind but more is to come. “On Numbers they are seeing 10.4 upwind - we are seeing that at times,” says Morgan of this early stage of their work-up. “When we are fast we should easily do those numbers, with more consistency. At the moment we are just learning to sail our modes but with the Ericsson guys here we are learning to do that pretty quickly.”

Typically downwind on day one here they are VMGing around 1-2 knots below wind speed when it was blowing 18-22 knots. “It is very impressive - more impressive than I could have imagined off the wind,” says Morgan. “It has a lot of power. We had no waves. We had waves off Cannes and the boat really wants to surf.”

In Sardinia she is racing with 19 crew, but her IRC rating allows her to go up to 21.
“It is just a good size,” concludes Morgan. “It is manageable. It is big and it is fast. You know you are sailing a 70 footer at the end of the day. But it is very different to the big boats and you feel like you can handle it and you can get good grinders and good winches so you can make things happen pretty quickly.”

While the new Alfa has all you would expect on deck, most impressive is her interior. To starboard in the ‘saloon’ area is her main table and cleverly this has been ‘rigged’ -suspended from the ceiling with wire and held in place by further wires attached to the cabin sole. Neat.

Then there is the engine compartment hood and the nav station which are profiled to ressemble a car - in fact many other features from the lockers to the companionway mimic the front grill of an Alfa Romeo.

Oddly, despite being a supposed ‘day sailor’ her displacement of 15 tonnes is one tonne more than a beefy and slightly larger Volvo Open 70. This is entirely due to her bulb weight which Morgan reckons is about two tonnes heavier than that on a VO70. While VO70s have extra structure plus a more complex keel mechanism as well as all the extra paraphernalia of an offshore race boat, a round the cans boat such as Alfa Romeo 3, has more weight in items to make her easier to handle around the cans – from jib tracks to more winches.

From Porto Cervo Alfa Romeo 3 moves on to Les Voiles de St Tropez, when Crichton and his supermaxi crew will campaign her for the first time.