Round the island on Mari Cha III

madforsailing editor James Boyd was on board Bob Miller's 147ft record breaker

With so many incredible boats attending the America's Cup Jubilee regatta there has been much fantasising going on in Cowes over which would be the most desirable boat to sail on. There are obviously the J-class yachts, with their supreme looks and majesty. There are the many 12 metre yachts as good or in some cases in better condition than the day they were launched. There are mighty classics such as the three masted powerhouse Shenandoah or Tom Perkins' immaculate Mariette.

My preference though is for the super-maxis, in particular the evil looking all-black Stealth, the water-borne race horse of Fiat boss Gianni Agnelli and more impressive still Mari-Cha III, the 147ft all-carbon fibre super-ketch of Mr Bob Miller. And so it was that the slipper fitted and I was able to sail the America's Cup Jubilee regatta's round the island on this extraordinary part-racing part-luxury cruising yacht.

To give you a little background about this boat: she is a design by Philippe Briand who has been involved with the last five French campaigns for the America's Cup and was built by Cooksons in New Zealand over the course of two years culminating in her launch at the end of 1997. She is the largest all carbon fibre racing yacht afloat. Her concept is as a boat which can be used for fast (very fast) cruising, but has a removable interior and so can be used for races or record breaking. She has taken part in a variety of events including Antigua Race Week, set a course record for Sydney to Hobart (although not the official race record) and the Millennium Cup during the last America's Cup. But most memorable was her west to east transatlantic record breaking run in October 1998 when she set a new monohull record for the crossing of 9 days.

Mari Cha III is moored off the Green at Cowes in an ideal spot to watch the end of the racing - a position in which she often finds herself as alongside Stealth she is the fastest boat in Cowes this week (this is on the assumption that Olivier de Kersauson's new maxi-trimaran doesn't show up as has been threatened) and tends to finish early. She is simply enormous with a beam of 29ft and two rigs - her main mast 159ft tall and her mizzen 122ft off the deck. The transom has been opened up and the RIB dumps me on the huge platform extending from her transom. I am presented with a large acreage of teak deck and more than 30 crew all clad in khaki GAP shorts, Mari Cha III T-shirts and Henri-Lloyd waterproof waistcoats.

I am led below by our hostess to get kitted out. Down below there is a large navigatorium and we double back on oursleves and down some more stairs to the mahogany panelled five star guest accommodation and I am nearly knocked backwards when I walk into a large plastic pipe running across the accommodation at chest height. What is going on???

Various modifications have been made to improve Mari Cha's performance recently. A permanent forestay has been removed to improve tacking ability (previously you had to furl the larger headsail first, tack and unfurl the boat as they use to on older Open 60s. It is the new water ballast system that I have encountered. Previous transferring the water ballast took around 11 minutes. The addition of this new plumbing - a pipe running directly across the boat - has cut this down to just 3 minutes. The makeshift pipe is taken down each night by the boat's engineer.

It takes me a while to work out if there are any familiar faces. North Sails' Mike Sanderson (aka Moose) is on board as helmsman. Mike raced on board New Zealand Endeavour and then Merit Cup in the Whitbread and was trimmer for Chris Dickson on TAG Heuer in the America's Cup. Mike is now racing with Oracle and has brought along fellow Kiwi Whitbread crewman Robbie Naismith. Then there is Glen Sowry (aka Foxy) now head of Public Affairs for TVNZ in Auckland who has come out of retirement to be navigator - he was a watch leader on Steinlager II in the Whitbread, involved with various America's Cup campaigns and most recently a Tornado Olympic campaign with Chris Dickson. Skipper Jef d'Etiveaud is French and the crew primarily comprises French and Americans.

Another RIB arrives to deposit Royal Yacht Squadron Commodore Peter Nicholson and his wife on board.

Skipper Jef d'Etiveaud gathers the army around and starts the briefing dividing up the workload. I am on port main mast runner with the boat's designer Philippe Briand. "We need to sail tidy," Mike Sanderson continues the briefing. "That seems to work best. I think the boat gave us a slap on the back of the hand yesterday."

Mari Cha III did not race on Monday because on the first day of sailing they'd almost pulled the mizzen down when the port runner got caught around the spreaders during a gybe. It broke the compression strut on the third spreader and although it was fixed, the spreader is still out of alignment. The three most nervous men on board today are David Barnaby and the team from Southern Spars. Glen walks the course for us in terms of the weather and tide. "The only thing we're interested in is beating Stealth." Winning on handicap is not a consideration (in fact we do win on handicap) the only thing interesting is having the fastest time around the island and if possible breaking the record - although this seems unlikely in the light conditions.

We leave the mooring at 1000 and already the area off Cowes is alive with boats. Some way in the distance the Js are flexing their muscles as is the 212ft long three masted staysail schooner Adix with her brave skipper Paul Goss at the helm. Our start is at 1115 but the starting sequence for the smaller vintage and modern boats is already under way. The course is round the island clockwise, eastabout as opposed to the usual course set annually by the Island Sailing Club. The sight is incredible. For anyone interested in racing boats it is a feast, with significant pieces of yachting history wherever one looks.

Thankfully there are hydraulic winches on board - lots and lots of them - to hoist the enormous sail plan. Mari Cha III has a new state of the art carbon fibre mainsail with taffeta on one side to give it some protection and this sail alone is scary in terms of its size, but fantastic in its construction and shape. There was a plan to sail with two reefs in the mizzen, but it seems very light and the whole sail goes up. We do keep a reef in the mainsail.

Our start is one of the scariest moments I have experienced in sailing simply because of the size of the boats involved. Our main competition is John McCaw's Extra Beat, the first 'super-maxi' and a mere 118ft long and being helmed by the America's Cup's most famous skipper Dennis Conner. However there is also the racey looking Rebecca, a German Frers ketch at 140ft which has Lawrie Smith at the wheel. But it is the rather less racey Anakena at 132ft which nearly collides with Mari Cha on the start line. There are screams from the cockpit as Mike Sanderson wrestles with the wheel to keep clear - full lock to full lock on Mari Cha III seems to be a very long way. Thankfully we miss but one is left with a sinking feeling about how costly a prang between two such large boats would be.

Once our collective pulse has stopped racing we can again apreciate the situation. A corridor with spectator craft packed in each side has opened up for the racing boats in front of the start line and helicopters whirr overhead with photographers and film crews hangin gout. The tide is also flowing like a river taking us down the Solent. We have got off to a good start on the favoured end of the line on starboard tack with Extra Beat and Rebecca pacing us down to leeward. Remarkably we seem to be pointing higher than them.


Continued on page 2...