Super maxi

For new maxis like Neville Crichton's new Shockwave designer Jim Pugh says they have thrown away the rule book

Owner Neville Crichton with his latest Shockwave

Once upon a time it seemed that if you read about a new maxi it would inevitably be a Farr design. Today when it comes to big racing monohulls the San Diego design house of Reichel Pugh are becoming the dominant force in this market. They recently scored a success when their Zephyrus V, the first of the new generation maxZ86 super sleds beat the giant Mari Cha III in the Pacific Cup.

Their latest creation to hit the water is the new Shockwave for Sydney-based Kiwi car importer and yachtsman Neville Crichton.

This new 90 footer will make her debut at the Hahn Premium Race Week at Hamilton Island in North Queensland mid-August. From there she will be the force to be reckoned with in December's Sydney-Hobart race. For the the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia's famous annual flight south she rates at 1.600, the maximum allowed under their rules.

"I am very confident that I now have the boat capable of winning line honours in the Rolex Sydney to Hobart," commented Crichton, for whom this is his sixth Shockwave - his previous boats included a Two Ton Cup winner, top Admiral's Cup yacht in 1983, as well as others which have competed in the Kenwood Cup, the Southern Cross Cup and the San Francisco Big Boat Series. He also regularly sails in the Farr 40 circuit with his Team Shockwave.

After the Hobart race, the new Shockwave take part in the Millenium Cup during the America's Cup in Auckland before heading for the northern hemisphere where she will do the usual circuit of the Bermuda Race, the Fastnet and the Round Gotland. However she will also take part in next year's big transatlantic race, the Daimler Chrysler Transatlantic Race from New York to Hamburg.

Her hull, painted silver, was built by John McConaghy in Sydney, with structural engineering carried out by SP Systems and was then shipped to Auckland to have her 135ft tall mast rigged by Southern Spars. Everything on her, of course, is carbon fibre - even her mainsail and headsails made by North Sails Australia are carbon fibre 3DL (admittedly with some aramid fibre in them too). Her winches and deck gear are by Harken.

"The boat is 90ft long and it was designed to be the fastest water ballasted, variable displacement boat we could do at 90ft for a wide range of races," designer Jim Pugh told madfor sailing. "Actually she is way too fast for the Sydney-Hobart in water ballast trim so we've put on a much heavier bulb for the Hobart race, and will forego the water ballast, which is kind of unfortunate but there are a lot of other races other than the Hobart race. So it's quite de-turboed for the Hobart."

One of the problems facing maxi owners, as Ludde Ingvall told us last year, is that the rules vary greatly between races as does the use of water ballast. "Just about every other race will accept water ballast. There are no other races where 1.6 is the limit, except the Admiral's Cup now. But that's it. You can do the Fastnet or any other race," comments Pugh.

Pugh says that the new Shockwave has marked differences to the latest generation maxZ86s like Zephyrus V. Most notably the races to Hawaii are rated under IMS and on this course you need stability for the first few days (stability is costly under IMS) while for the last two thirds of the course you want the boat to be as light as possible.

"Because it is an IMS rated race we use quite a lot of inside ballast - on a boat like that [ Zephyrus V] there is 3-4 tonnes of inside ballast, " continues Pugh. "After that race we put on a bulb which is about 1.5 tonnes heavier and we take out all the inside ballast and we end up with a boat floating much lighter with good stability and then we can do some other things with the rig to really pump up the sail area. We can move the headsail forward to the bow of the boat. That's what we do with Pegasus and Pyewacket. Then Pyewacket when it races in something like the Bermuda race when it needs even more stability we can pump up the bulb even more and we can set it up for more tight reaching like you're going to get on the way to Bermuda."

While Transpac winners inevitably ended up being typeformed to work well under IMS in terms of displacement and volume distribution in the hull, Pugh says that recently they have been throwing the rule book out of the window.

"What we do when we design new boats like Zephyrus and Shockwave, is say 'we're not going to look anymore at rating rules like that', because it type forms the boat so much and the rules change so much even in two years. So basically we go for sheer performance and these are the first boats we've been able to do that. It's really fantastic because we can get so much more performance and you get a lot more bang for the buck. And if you look at the races you can get into and there are in fact very few you can't get in."

So when you hear the crews of these boats talking about 'modes' this is what they are referring to: take the fastest boat you can and then tweak the rig and keel until it squeezes inside the rating for the race you want to enter. "So you take one of these light boats and you try and put it into the ILC 470 rule [the maximum allowed under Bermuda Race rules] and it actually rates quite low, because it doesn't look like it goes upwind that well," explains Pugh. "The emphasis on the ILC 470 rule is for upwind performance. So it's quite good because we can pump that boat up and even though it is a pretty short boat it can go pretty fast to Bermuda..."

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John Reichel (left) and Jim Pugh