Taking on the Reichel Pughs

We look at Mike Slade's impressive new 30m super maxi Leopard 3, this year's boat to watch out for

Over recent years the 30m super maxi class been mostly an Antipodean affair, with the main aim of Neville Crichton’s two Alfa Romeos, Bob Oatley’s Wild Oats XI, Stuart Thwaites Konica Minolta/ Zana and Grant Wharington’s Skandia being the prestigious line honours trophy in the Rolex Sydney Hobart. However this big boat elite is soon to be joined by a pom, albeit with a boat designed in the US and built in their own backyard.

Mike Slade has been a titan among yacht owners in the UK for some years. With the exception of the Mediterranean maxi Longobarda, his series of Leopards have been racer cruisers, enabling the boss of the Helical Bar property development company to offset some of the running costs by charter. This series of boats culminated in the last Leopard of London, a sleek 90ft long Reichel Pugh design that Slade campaigned enthusiastically around the world in most leading events over the course of six years. She has now been sold to a Spanish owner.

“The thinking was just to update. Basically the last boat came after the Volvo 60s - it was the first big cruiser racer to have water ballast. It served us well but was probably a little too heavy,” says Chris Sherlock, Slade’s representative and skipper. If the last Leopard was born of the Volvo 60, the new Leopard 3 is similarly related to the Volvo Open 70, incorporating many of their ideas, particularly a canting keel. “With this boat Mike gave the Farr guys an ambitious design briefing to build something powerful, that we could also use in the cruising/corporate charter market after its useful race life.”

While the last Leopard started life at 70:30 racer:cruiser the new boat will be 90:10 because, initially at least, it will have no interior forward of the mast and the saloon will be removable. “We’re not carrying anything additional to what Alfa Romeo and Wilds Oats are carrying in our first 13 month race program from beginning of June 2007 until the end of the Bermuda race 2008.” After this it will be fitted out with a full on Ken Freivokh designed interior.



Mike Slade on with the wheel of his former Leopard , with Chris Sherlock in the background

Leopard 3 is from Farr Yacht Design, who, while they dominate every other aspect of the yacht racing market, have allowed Reichel Pugh to become the dominant force in big, canting keel race boats outside of the Open 60 and Volvo circuits. While Farr had three boats in the last Volvo Ocean Race and now has a rush on of Open 60s, the last maxi race boat they designed was Larry Ellison’s Sayonara 11 years ago. Slade commissioned the design of the new Leopard during the last Volvo Ocean Race but the green button was only pushed in February/March 2006, with the build starting at McConaghys north of Sydney soon after.

While Farr are relatively new to this exact genre of boat, McConaghys are unquestionably the builder with most experience of such boats having been behind Neville Crichton’s two Alfa Romeos, the last three Wild Oats canting keelers as well as the Dubois-designed Genuine Risk and Hasso Plattner’s maxZ86 Morning Glory. “It is their fifth or sixth canting keel big boat and no failures,” says Sherlock. Aside from the pedigree of the builder, a lot of local contractors have also been brought in, all with experience of boats of this type.

Cowes-based John Bremner is Project Manager, having had the same role for the last Leopard, Peter Harrison’s Sojana as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean Volvo Open 70. Bringing huge experience to the project in the systems and rigging are Dark Horse, John Hildebrand and Andrew Henderson’s company. Both Hildebrand and Hendo have both worked for Slade’s campaigns in the past as well as for Offshore Challenges’ Open 60 projects and for Bob Oatley’s Wild Oats canting keelers. All the composite engineering work has been carried out internally at Farr, while all the engineering for the systems has been masterminded by Nick McGarry’s company C-Designs in the UK.

And what of the beast herself? Like Slade’s previous boat the new Leopard is a real looker, sleek, long and finished in Arctic Frost metallic, chosen by Slade and a colour Range Rover owners will be familiar with. Her beam is just over a metre wider than the latest Reichel Pugh maxis, but for her length she is still more slender than a Volvo Open 70, although oddly she still has chines as a device to make the hull behave as if it is wider than it actually is. This grew into her design thanks to what Farr saw in the Volvo says Sherlock.

Below the water, twin lifting rudders were considered but the beam of the new Leopard doesn’t appear to have been enough to warrant them and so she has a single rudder, a decision backed by Farr as well as Slade.

More deliberation was made over the keel format. A canting keel was always on the cards, but in the early stages APM in Italy, who were handling the design of their keel system, went a long way down the road with developing a canting-lifting system. The plan was to fit the keel foil into a cassette, allowing it to be raised, while the cassette system would cant in its entirety. However when APM carried out a weight study, this was set to add an extra 2 tonnes to the boat. The lifting-canting system would allow them to increase draft from 5m to 6.5m but in the end the figures were unacceptable and Leopard 3 is to be fitted with a straight canting system drawing 5.5m, with more lead in the bulb. “The cross over was at about 6.5 knots reaching where the lifting/canting was quicker,” says Sherlock, visibly relieved they opted for the simpler system.



Chris Sherlock with the mock up of the keel ram installation at McConaghys

The keel cants 40 degrees side to side powered by two rams, one mounted either side of the head of the keel inside the boat. The bulb on Leopard weighs 13.5 tonnes compared to Wild Oats which pre-Hobart race had an extra tonne put on her bulb bringing it up to 12. While the bulb is being made in Australia, the foil is made of steel, cast and then forged by APN in Italy. All hydraulic work for the keel canting system along with the numerous sail controls throughout the boat have been carried out by another key local contractor, Central Coast Hydraulics, who have performed this task for all the McConaghy-built canting keelers as well as for the VO70 movistar (to read about the work Central Coast did on movistar's keel, along with a video guided tour of it - click here). Sherlock reckons the all-up weight of their keel system including rams and canting brackets will be in the region of 19 tonnes.

Another area of development beneath the water are Leopard 3’s daggerboards. Unlike the CBTF system as fitted on the Reichel Pugh canting keelers, Leopard has twin asymmetric lifting daggerboards to prevent leeway like the VO70s and most Open 60s. Nothing particularly new there, save that Leopard's boards are lifted on powered rollers. Hydraulic rams push the rollers on to the board and then lift or lower the boards. The mechanism was devised by Nick McGarry who set up a test jig to trial the new system. “We put 25 tonnes of side load on the bottom of the board and were still able to move it which was quite amazing,” says Sherlock.

Unlike other asymmetric boards, the ones on Leopard can’t be end for ended in case one breaks, so instead they will be carry an extra get-me-home style daggerboard that will fit into either case in the event of a breakage. “They are about US$100,000 each, for a canard out of high modulus carbon, and having two spares is a bit excessive. And what is to say that we aren’t going to change the design of them two years down the track?” explains Sherlock. Due to the roller mechanism the boards don’t taper and Sherlock reckoned this could be an avenue of development in the future.

In addition to her canting keel Leopard will be able to take on board around 4 tonnes of water in tanks at either side of the boat aft. Sherlock anticipates this being used offshore to lift the bow at high speed, even through the hull shape is already very full in the bow section.



Wandering around McConaghy’s one of the most impressive and scary parts of the new Leopard is her bow sprit - a wopping 4.5m long (see above). “It is a very big bowsprit,” agrees Sherlock. “I still wake up at night worrying about that! Our biggest worry is if the martin breaker doesn’t fire off the tack of the chute coming into a bottom mark and we are constrained by the land we are going to have a bit on getting someone out there especially if we have got some pace on.”

Above deck the rig will tower 48m off the water, around 5m taller than Wild Oats and Alfa Romeo with an exponentially larger sail area to power her extra displacement, expected to be around 36.5 tonnes to the Reichel-Pugh's 29 in racing trim. With A2, staysail and full main the new Leopard will be able to fly a maximum of around 1,600sqm of sail…

The rig is carbon fibre and built by Southern Spars and is cathedral rigged, like America’s Cup boats with the diagonals passing through the tube, to improve sheeting angles. Sherlock says the rig started life having four spreaders but working with Ilan Graetz at Southern they managed to reduce tube size by going to five spreaders.

Sails were ordered through North UK but have been designed by North Special Projects Group led by JB Braun currently serving at BMW Oracle Racing. Following his experience on ABN AMRO One, a team acknowledged as having the most advanced sail program in the last Volvo Ocean Race, Mike Sanderson has been brought as a consultant, particularly looking at the geometry of the sail plan. In December they tried out some 18 downwind sail combinations at the University of Auckland’s twisted flow wind tunnel and are returning for another week in February to examine cross overs. “You’ve not going to live by it but it will give you a damned good idea and it will save so many hours on the water,” says Sherlock.

All the halyards are on locks, including two for the fractionals, two for the mastheads using a new lock system developed by Southern Spars with the sheave stepped out from the rig to reduce chafe; an ABN AMRO idea now incorporated by Southern Spars. Then they have a single external halyard on a lock for the genoa. For ease of handling all the headsails are on furlers. Like the rest of the boat, the sail plan is not optimised for IRC although this will come and for the Maxi Yacht Rolex Worlds next year they are likely for example to have to leave their 750sqm A1 on the dock Sherlock reckons.



Standing rigging is all in Future Fibres PBO. Sherlock says they considered Southern Spars carbon fibre rigging, but they figured it was just too early to go down this route. “If we lose a rig on this boat we are out of action for eight months,” he says.

Like the other 30m Rolex Sydney Hobart supermaxis, the new Leopard 3 will be a push button boat, with hydraulic winches. There is no facility for operating the boat through coffee grinders so some interesting debate is on the cards should Leopard come to do record attempts, where at present powered winches are prohibited under WSSRC rules.

If the hydraulics fail the crew can still operate the boat and can centre the keel, but with the present set-up they would not be able to get adequate runner loads. While racing an engine will be running constantly and unlike Wild Oats and Alfa Romeo, Leopard is fitted with both a main engine running the hydraulics (as well as the Volvo-style raisable prop) and an auxiliary donkey engine to handle everything else.

In practice the headsail trimmers will have their own push button panels to alter jib in-out and up-down, etc while at each helm station are the controls for keel cant and daggerboards. All the hydraulics including downhauls along the foredeck, the checkstays, baby checks and backstays are run via a single hydraulic nerve centre known as a PLC developed by Central Coast Hydraulics.

While there is an owners guest cockpit forward, the working cockpit area is aft, where, unqieuly, the pit is also located. There are coamings either side of the forward cockpit but these are removable when racing. As Sherlock explains: “We have made the companionway massive to get the sails in and out of. We have gone to predominantly laminated downwind sails and when they are bricked up they are massive, so we have to have a very large companionway to get them in and out. With the coamings off, when we are dragging them up it is all just flat." Sherlock reckons they will sail with 25 crew inshore and no more than 20 offshore.



When we visited Leopard 3 she had had her deck put on and then had been turned back upside down, a process typical of McConaghy, before being righted again this week to have all her systems fitted. She is due to leave Australia on a ship at the beginning of April and will then be finally assembled in Southampton in May, the rig being shipped from New Zealand and the keel from Italy. Sea trials will take place mid to late May with her official launch scheduled for 8 June.

The program for the new Leopard 3 will include competing in the RORC season taking in the Rolex Fastnet Race in August before the boat heads to the Med for the Maxi Worlds, Nioulargue, etc. Perhaps Alfa Romeo may make it up to the Fastnet (Bob Oatley says he's not planning on bringing Oats), but we expect Sardinia is likely to be the first occasion she gets to line up with the Reichel Pugh competition. After the Med season, Leopard 3 will then be shipped back to Australia to compete in the Rolex Sydney Hobart and then back to the north hemisphere to compete in the Caribbean regattas in 2008 and then the Bermuda Race, provided they are allowed to enter.

It is possible, if the schedule allows and the weather is appropriate that they will then make an attempt on the monohull transatlantic record. Under present rules they will be allowed to make an attempt on the four master Phocea’s powered winches record but not on Mari Cha IV’s outright monohull non-powered record.

Another project owner Mike Slade is known to be keen on is making an attempt on the fully crewed monohull, non-stop around the world record, which to date no one has claimed, despite several campaigns such as Bols and Mari Cha IV having contemplated it in the past.

As to her performance this remains somewhat theoretical. Upwind 13 knots should be achievable, downwind late 30s, more than 40? “The Volvo 70s were doing 40 so this will do it but it will depend upon how brave we are when the time comes,” says Sherlock. What seems certain is that in an Alfa Romeo/ Wild Oats v Leopard 3 dust up, the former will come off best in light to moderate conditions while Leopard 3 should prove the tool of choice offshore.

What do you think about boats like this having powered winches? Should the WSSRC ease their rules to allow records to be set by boats with powered winches - after all you are allowed hydraulically powered canting keels, even canting keels operated by a block and tackle system driven by a powered winch. Why not powered winches? What do you think? Email us here