Supermaxi update

Chris Sherlock describes the mods made to Leopard and when they will line up with Speedboat/Virgin Money

Will the 100ft supermaxis ever get to race one another? The wonder machines seem to have been out of phase over the course of this year with Alfa Romeo and Rambler in the Med, Speedboat in the States and Wild Oats and Maximus down under.

The next line-up looks set to be the South Atlantic Race, formerly known as the Cape Town-Rio race, that now ends up in Salvador de Bahia. In this Mike Slade’s Leopard will be up against George David’s Rambler.

For the last few weeks the mighty Leopard has been out of the water in Hamble Yacht Services undergoing a £250,000 refit including a couple of fairly major modifications. This has focussed on the back end of the boat where she has changed from having one rudder to two. According to Leopard’s Chris Sherlock this has come about following the R&D work the Farr office carried out for the Telefonica boats.

“Originally when we went to Farr to design this boat they wanted us to have twin rudders, but they said we would have to have a windward rudder lifting out of the water when it wasn’t being used. But since they have done all their work and tank testing with Telefonica, that is now no longer the case, so that is why we took the opportunity to put the twin rudders in now, because we can leave the windward rudder in the water and because they are so much smaller than what they though they had to be.”

The effect should be less drag and better control. “They tell us it is going to be quite dramatic,” says Sherlock of what difference the change will make. “Before the boat tracked well, it was just heavy when we had an R2, a reaching headsail and full main up, so hopefully with this we can drive harder at a higher angle with the rudders.”

In addition to this a scoop has been added at her stern. This is due to a change in the maximum LOA allowed for the supermaxis from 30m to 100ft. The scoop has increased her length by 480mm and also provides a convenient new home for the liferafts.

In addition to this Sherlock and his team have been through the boat with a fine toothcomb trying to par down weight. With this refit and including the mods, they have manage to relieve 700kg from on board.

“The revised VPPs from Farr says that is quite a bit quicker, with the scoop and optimising the boat where the weight is and the flotation. It all adds up to be something that was worthwhile doing for the amount of money we spent.”

So Leopard is currently on a ship heading south bound for Durban and Sherlock reckons she’ll be in Cape Town by the end of November ready for the South Atlantic Race, where the big fellas get underway on 10 January (the small classes head off earlier). From there Leopard will head up to the Caribbean for the RORC’s newly announced Caribbean 600, Antigua Sailing Week. From there it will be on up to New York to have a pop at breaking the outright monohull west to east transatlantic record, having broken Phocea’s existing record for boats with powered winches earlier this year (but not breaking Mari Cha IV’s non-powered assisted outright monohull record).

According to Sherlock the first time we might see a larger line-up of supermaxis will be the Caribbean 600 when Speedboat/Virgin Money should be joining in the fun with Leopard and Rambler. “I spoke to Neville [Crichton, owner of Alfa Romeo] last week and he said he won’t bring Alfa to that because it is a predominantly reaching sort of race and that doesn’t suit him.”

The Caribbean 600 sounds like it is highly appealing to Leopard's owner Mike Slade and Sherlock says they will sail that event with 30 crew! “It is a three day round the buoys. There are so many legs going around the islands in the middle of the night, so it is will be a tough race with lots of sails going up and down for sure.” However while he reckons the IRC-optimised Rambler will be tough to beat on corrected, it will be the jockeying for line honours between the three boats that will prove most interesting.