Doing the Wild Thing

News of Grant Wharington's brand new canting-keel maxi

Grant Wharington's green maxi Wild Thing has been active on the race circuit in both Europe and down in Wharington's native Australia. But now Wharington wants to up his game and has a new giant, state of the art maxi under construction.

30m (98.4ft) long, the new Wild Thing is designed to rate at 1.600, the largest permitted in the Rolex Sydney-Hobart. She will also take part in the Rolex Fastnet, Cape-Rio and Rolex Transatlantic as well as sailing in major regattas such as Skandia Life Cowes Week and the Maxi Rolex Cup in Sardinia. Some offshore records attempts, including the monohull 24 hour record, are also planned.

The boat is very much a home town effort from Mornington, Victoria where Wharington lives and runs his property development business. Don Jones is the chief designer and structural engineer of this yacht, while construction has been underway for eight months at Mal Hart's Hart Marine.

“The fundamental design philosophy of our chief designer and structural engineer has been to minimise wetted surface area," says Wharington of the concept for his new boat. "We have a low drag hull with very semi circular lines in section. We have the same upwind sail area as Neville Crichton’s maxi Alfa Romeo but more stability. She is going to be a very fast, narrow yacht. At 30 metres long she is less than 5 metres wide and will demonstrate all the latest design features including a canting keel and retractable engine drive.”

Wharington says she will be the largest canting keel offshore race boat in the world. Unlike Open 60s she will have no water ballast to alter fore and aft trim. For engine propulsion she will use a Mercruiser leg - like a powerboat's - but it can be pulled into the hull to minimise drag.

The layout of the deck promises to be clean and simple. Wharington has opted for electric winches with no pedestal winches. "Although sail handling will always be an issue with a yacht of this size, and keep crew numbers up, our electric winches should allow us to reduce the number crew we need, without compromising on efficiency and performance levels."

No details have been made public yet about the rig, other than that it is 'unusual' and will be built in carbon fibre by Applied Composites in Melbourne. Possibly Wharington has some wingmast ideas that have been used in the Open 60 class, although he says that the number of winches will be minimal, suggesting the use of furling sails. The boat will race with 16-20 crew.



Unlike the present Wild Thing, which comes with a fully fared interior, the new boat will be stripped out and fitted with pipe cots.

Hull and deck will be joined at the end of next month and the boat is due of launch in the third quarter of this year. She will then undergo a sail development program prior to her first major outing in the Rolex Sydney-Hobart race.

Rather than this being solely an 'owner's yacht' Wharington wants to make it pay and has set up Wild Thing Yachting to market a number of sponsorship packages divided between the 'principle partner', four 'supporting partners' and 'executive supporters'.

Wharington is excited at the prospect of getting his maxi in the water to start racing. He has been buoyed up by the recent increase in enthusiasm for yachting across the business world and believes that this sport may finally be getting the credit it deserves.

"Things are really starting to come together. The yacht is really taking shape and I am very pleased with progress so far. I’m delighted that this project has also attracted some great potential partners - it seems that the benefits yacht sponsorship can bring to corporate organisations is finally hitting home.”

How will the new Wild Thing stack up against other maxis such as Alfa Romeo ? Give us your views via Outlook or by a message box .