Back in action

Grant Wharington discusses how he brought his Skandia maxi back from the brink since her near-loss in the Rolex Sydney-Hobart

Hard to miss this week on the Solent even for the most diligent, eyes-in-the-boat Cowes Week sailor has been Grant Wharington's Skandia flagship maxi. That this boat is here in the UK is an impressive feat as seven months ago during the Rolex Sydney-Hobart race, her canting keel system broke forcing the crew to abandon her. When Wharington and his team recovered their maxi they found her upside down with the keel completely gone...

The boat was uninsured at the time and a lesser man may well have been tempted to throw in the towel at this point, but Wharington was not about to be beaten. In just four month they fully rebuilt the boat - remember Wharington was simultaneously building a Volvo Open 70 at this time - and then got her shipped to Europe ready for Skandia Cowes Week.

"It was a huge rebuild," admits the Australian property developer/pro-sailor. "All the inside structurally - the mast frames, the keel frames - were damaged. We’d lost the rig, all the winches were gone, the steering, pedestals and keel. The rudder was okay, the canard was okay and the hull shell and some of the framing. It would have been an insurance write-off - had it been insured. So, ouch!"

The unscheduled rebuild of Skandia-Wild Thing gave Wharington, designer Don Jones and their team a chance to make several modifications they had planned. The boat has now been taken out of the old Rolex Sydney-Hobart mode where her maximum allowed IRC rating was 1.61 (this has been canned for subsequent Hobart races in any case). Now the keel cant angle has been increased from +/-15° to +/-40°. (We are told to hang on as Wharington demonstrates this when we get on board, controlling the keel angle by a cute wireless remote). Because they have increased the cant angle they have managed to take 3 tonnes out of the bulb and as a result the displacement of the boat is 25 as opposed to 28 tonnes.



Grant Wharington with his remote control for Skandia 's canting keel

With the increase in cant angle, so the mechanics of the canting system have had to be modified and now the lever arm (the top of the keel foil) inside the hull has been shortened from 1.5 to 0.6m to prevent the hydraulic rams from having to have an enormous throw.

Rams. A sore topic for Wharington as it was the rams that caused their problems in the Hobart race. "The rods buckled and snapped in half. They were built under-spec. They were supposed to be 75 diameter and they were actually 50. And we never picked it up, but they [the builders of the rams] were contracted to manufacture a certain thing and they didn’t. That argument continues..." he muses.

The new rams on Skandia-Wild Thing are once again both located on the port side of the keel. Wharington explains why: "Because we are not so hard in the bilge it is very difficult to fit the cylinders in, so if we had one each side it would have cut the boat off and it would be difficult to walk through. So that’s why we are happy to put them on one side. We are slightly asymmetric, but you can put all the batteries and anchors on the opposite side to compensate for it and a few other alterations. It all works out fine."



In addition to the canting keel mods, the horsepower in the rig has substantially increased by increasing mast height by 3.5m. As a result the new carbon rig has three rather than two spreaders.

The boat is obviously substantially faster than she was, but having been relaunched only recently Wharington says they are still tickling up the VPPs. "It is certainly faster. Our first impression is that we are probably about 5% faster upwind and we are 15% faster downwind. We are noticeably faster downwind."

With the increased performance so their IRC rating has soared up to 1.735. "Maybe it is slightly less competitive than it was on corrected time, I don’t know," he says. "But there are obviously new 30m boats being built, so it was important for us to optimise her as much as we could just to make her go fast and have slightly less regard to corrected time."

Skandia's main competition in the Rolex Fastnet Race will be Charles Brown and Bill Buckley's Maximus , another maxi in the 100ft LOA area but a year younger than Skandia. However her rating is 1.774

After winning the Hobart race in 2003 and her disaster last year, Wharington's maxi will again be competing this year when she will be up against the brand new maxis of Neville Crichton and Bob Oatley. "They have an even lighter bulb - they have gone to 10 or 11 (tonnes) and they have gone a further 4m taller than us with the rig, which just amazes me," says Wharington of Neville Crichton's new Alfa Romeo . "They are really going to have their hands full trying to manage that boat. Our length and beam will be similar and about the same displacement. I think their hull’s a little bit heavier than us, but their keel is a little bit lighter." The new Alfa is also CBTF with a steerable canard in the bow.

One of the principle differences with Skandia-Wild Thing compared to other modern maxis is her reliance on powered winches, allowed on boats of this size under IRC. "We could sail this boat with ten people no problem at all," says Wharington. In the event they will be sailing the Rolex Fastnet Race with 16, which he says is dictated by the number of people required to drop the kite. "It doesn’t make sense to make everybody wind things manually. On Maximus they have ten just grinding. And they seem to be the blokes that eat and drink the most as well! I think saving money hasn’t gone out of fashion yet. It just costs a hell of a lot less money to have less people on the boat, less accommodation, etc and these winches are far cheaper than actually buying pedestals as well."

In terms of the crew Wharington says that half of his Volvo crew will be descending on Cowes for the Rolex Fastnet Race this weekend as the remainder continue to work up their new Volvo 70 back in Australia. "The balance is made up of our original Skandia crew, so they’ll be doing the Sydney-Hobart in this boat while the Volvo crew are doing that. So it is quite busy times." An interesting face in the crew this Sunday will be that of Laser Olympic sailor Michael Blackburn who is trialling for their Volvo team.

After the Rolex Fastnet Race, Skandia Wild Thing is heading down to Sardinia to compete in the Maxi Rolex Worlds, before being shipped back to Australia. "We put it on the same ship the Volvo boat comes off. And then we’ll take the Volvo boat down to Spain."

Busy times indeed.