The new benchmark

The Daily Sail was the first on board the world's largest (and fastest) racing monohull Mari Cha IV

If 1999-2000 was when maxi-multihulls made a quantum leap in sailing performance with the advent of the new big cats for The Race, then 2003 looks set to become the year when monohulls make a similar jump.

The last 12 months have seen the launch of Neville Crichton's Alfa Romeo that has gone on a trophy-grabbing spree most notably picking up line honours in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race and Fastnet races. This was followed by the launch of the new Hugh Welbourn-designed Bols, which on paper looks set to be faster than Crichton's boat, although disappointingly the two have yet to line up. While these boats have brought increases in singlehulled speed under sail, we have reserved the term 'quantum leap' for Robert Miller's newly launched Mari Cha IV.

Before you switch off expecting us to wax lyrical about the shininess of the gold taps or the alignment of the bird's eye maple joinery, Mari Cha IV is not a superyacht, but a fully uncompromised racing machine. Launched in August, we believe that before the year is out she will set a new monohull 24 hour record, break the 500 mile day barrier and could also win back the west to east transatlantic record.

The machine

The reason for these bold claims is that while most of the new maxis launched recently or in build are in the 90-100ft LOA range, Mari Cha IV is a 140ft long schooner, usefully 50+ft bigger.

Sail boats this size tend to be unwieldy affairs, superyachts with heavyweight interiors with dishwashers and Italian joinery, their gear custom-built at the limit of technology...and always heavy. Compared to her predecessor, the Briand-designed 147ft ketch Mari Cha III, the new boat is half the weight - 50 tons as opposed to 109 tonnes and has considerably more horsepower through her two near identical rigs. Significantly she is the first sailing boat of this size designed to withstand being sailed by Kiwis, ie flat out Volvo Ocean Race-style without the use of hydraulic winches.

Mari Cha IV has come about due to the excessive demands being made on her predecessor, which the Miller family used for cruising, while also maintaining an active race schedule. Mari Cha III's racing history has been diverse - from the America's Cup Jubilee in the Solent to Antigua Race Week to regattas in the Med to the Millenium Cup in New Zealand. Yet she also is the unofficial course record holder in the Sydney-Hobart Race and her finest hour was when she established the west to east monohull transatlantic record. This record has since fallen to Bernard Stamm's Open 60.

Mari Cha III was also a compromise. She is unquestionably fast compared to other superyachts but has a full-on luxury interior, albeit made of lightweight cored panelling and removable for races. A combination of these issues prompted Robert Miller to proceed with the design and build of Mari Cha IV following their successful blast south to Hobart in 1999.

For the new boat Miller decided upon a design team approach. With their experience of Mari Cha III and other maxis , Jef d'Etiveaud, his skipper and Project Manager of the new boat and Mike Sanderson, a former Whitbread and Volvo Ocean Race competitor and Mari Cha's racing skipper, sat on the design team along with Philippe Briand and Yannick Abgraal from the Briand office who carried out most of the naval architecture. Team New Zealand designer Clay Oliver was brought in to come up with the lines but particularly brought the latest thinking in appendages to the team and developed the all-important VPPs. For some left field thinking Kiwi architect Greg Elliott was brought in. Elliott had designed the Primo 52 schooner in which Sanderson and Brad Jackson had won the two handed in the Round North Island Race.

The team set about the exciting task of creating the world's fastest offshore racing monohull.

With no rule to limit them and no particular events to enter, their design was apparently free from constraints. During the design the boat could have gone on and on getting larger and faster but in the end there proved to be two practical limitations.

The first was the same as has affected all the new generation 'G' class maxis (mono or multihull) - the boat would have to be sailed without the aid of powered winches. Even with modern lightweight sail materials like carbon 3DL and Cuben fibre, there is a limit to the size of sails even a burly maxiboat crew can hoist or haul around.

The second was the gear. Sanderson says in talking to suppliers about the new boat there proved to be a distinct size limit at which race boat gear became superyacht gear and exponentially heavier as a result. This proved particularly true of all the gear associated with the rig. It is no coincidence that the latest supermaxis are all 90-100ft long as apart from maximum rating limits for events like the Rolex Sydney-Hobart and Fastnet Race, this appears to be the current size limit for race boat hardware. " Bols and Shockwave have the same winches and runner blocks as we have and that's no coincidence - we've got two rigs the same size as theirs and we are 55ft longer," explains Sanderson.

As with all 'open' multihulls and monohulls light weight is critical to performance and aside from managing the design team, skipper Jef d'Etiveaud was responsible for carrying out an extremely detailed assessment of how much Mari Cha IV would weigh.

"If you go above 93ft you become a superyacht and the weight goes through the roof," says Sanderson. "It is a terrible rolling effect because as soon as the weight goes up, then the engine size goes up and then the rig goes back up again because of the righting moment and the rods get bigger and it is a terrible spiral to get into."

Typically the bigger the rig and sails get so lightweight America's Cup winches are no longer capable of managing them and the deck gear manufacturers start to recommend stainless gear rather than titanium for items like blocks.

On board

She's a beast. The Daily Sail was fortunate enough to be the first on board Mari Cha IV during her early sea trials in Cherbourg, where she was built by JMV Industries. This boatyard is where Cam Lewis' maxi catamaran Team Adventure was built, but is best know for the Open 60s built there such as Ecover, Gartmore, Somewhere and Christophe Auguin's Vendee Globe and BOC Challenge winner Geodis. They are currently building the new Lombard Open 60s for Jean le Cam and Roland Jourdain.

Mari Cha IV's construction was entirely in prepreg carbon/Nomex cooked at 120degC and structurally she would appear to be like a rock. Aside from the normal series of bulkheads there are two full height longitudinals that span the aft two thirds of the boat. This internal structure enabled them to save weight in the hull and is certainly necessary given that she must have one of the lowest freeboard to length ratios of any boat afloat.

Looks-wise her hull is very different to Mari Cha III. The old boat had a very straight sheer line while Mari Cha IV has very slight reverse sheer forward, a plumb bow with an Open 60-style rounded knuckle. Although shorter she has a much longer waterline length and draws a wopping 6.5m compared to the previous boat's 4.3m. "The shapings are to do with its seakeeping and its handling characteristics and its behaviour," explains Sanderson. "We wanted it to be well behaved because an angry 140footer isn't much fun..."

While she has very low freeboard her beam max of 10m is greater than the old boat and she has considerable flare that narrows to a relatively narrow waterline. Her stern reminded us of the old Whitbread ketches, perhaps little surprise as a number of her crew including Sanderson were on Grant Dalton's 1993/4 Whitbread winner, New Zealand Endeavour.

Her deck is just enormous. Sanderson says that you could fit an America's Cup yacht into the perimeter of the cockpit alone. With the two wheels some distance apart about one third of the LOA forward from the transom, the controls for both the mizzen and the main are within easy hailing distance from the helm. In practise when racing each rig has its own team of grinders and trimmers.

Why a schooner?

Considerable work went into developing the rigs. The spars were made by Southern Spars in New Zealand. While both rigs are similar in height, their engineering is different - the forward rig can accept 100% of the boat's righting moment, while the mizzen can only accept 50% of it.

Sanderson says that although the schooner option seemed the most likely from the outset, and Elliott was pushing them in this direction, they also looked at sloops and ketches. In the end the schooner option proved itself in the wind tunnel, as well as offering maximum horsepower in the most handlable form and with the lowest centre of effort. Because of this power it also enabled them to build a bigger boat than they would have had the boat been a sloop or another ketch.

The schooner option was also a progression from New Zealand Endeavour. " New Zealand Endeavour had a shorter main mast and bigger mizzen than the other maxis and was shorter and lighter and was a faster boat," says Sanderson. "She was only 1m away from being a schooner, whereas Merit and La Poste had smaller mizzens and bigger mainmasts and were faster upwind."

From the Whitbread and the Primo Sanderson says they learned about mizzen 'staysail world'. Mari Cha IV even uses the same codes for their mizzen sails as New Zealand Endeavour. "That’s the only way we know," says Sanderson adding that they ought to appoint their old skipper Grant Dalton as an honourary member. "If he wasn’t so busy we’d have had him in a heart beat. Get him back on the bow or something! I hope he can get some time and come sailing with us, because he’d love it and he could help us out a lot from his experience on the maxi ketches and the maxi cat."

In use the theory goes that the sail plan should be kept balanced between the two rigs. "We'll never pull the mizzen down unless it is a storm," says Sanderson. "Just keep the sail plan balanced - we learned that with the Whitbread ketches. You have got keep something up at the back, hence the mainsail has two reefs, while the mizzen has three."

Sanderson says that the greater the rig separation, the more efficient the sail plan and better they will perform upwind or on tight reaches. "Separation is king and it is a double gain because you are also able to fit on bigger mizzen staysails, which are incredibly efficient sails, because they are positioned right over the centre of effort of the boat."

Separation of the rigs was part of the reason why on the old Whitbread ketch the mast appeared to be almost raked forward. At present Mari Cha IV's mizzen has a degree more rake than the main mast, although Sanderson says they may change this.

"You’re faced with a few problems with the main mast getting further forward in the boat from a buoyancy point of view and the J is getting smaller which is not good and as you keep moving the mizzen mast back you start running out of angle for the mizzen runners and topmast. The maxi ketches used to have little spreaders on the runners that used to shock cord back into the top spreader. We wanted to stay away from that with this rig.

On the new boat the mizzen seems to be positioned such that the sails flown forward of it are a reasonable size, yet as with all twin sparred boats the mizzen sees the apparent wind further forward due to a bending of the wind from the main mast and sails. For reaching and running there are also some interesting effects when for example five sail reaching (mizzen, mizzen staysail, main, staysail and genoa) due to having so many slots.

The sail wardrobe was developed by North Sails NZ's Burns Fallow and Micky Ickert along with David Duff and Sanderson. The principle sails are built in carbon 3DL or Cuben fibre and the concept is that because the boat is light for its size they will be able to use relatively small sails to keep her powered up to the maximum.

Many of the headsails are on roller furling for ease of handling and they won't be carrying a spinnaker pole, although Sanderson says they are considering a little one for hard running conditions when they have to go with the sea state. "The intention is that the boat isn't going to want to square aft."

At present the standing rigging is rod, although they may fit PBO or Southern Spars' new carbon filament standing rigging when it becomes available. They are using Southern Spars' halyard locks, tested up to 30 tonnes.

Sanderson talks at length about how Mari Cha IV is a belt and braces boat that is simple and can be pushed hard in terms of the size of sails and specification of the deck gear. An additional part of this equation has been developing a rudder system for the boat that seems like that of a smaller boat - with 'feel' and notably without hydraulics.

In part two of this article tomorrow we will look at her innovative movable ballast system, her speed potential and her forthcoming transat record attempt

See more on board photos over the next pages - or Thierry Martinez's complete photo gallery here