There's big boats and then there's big boats - and two of the most recently launched may be heading to the Caribbean next year for a little bit of "fun" racing. Robert Miller's 139-foot behemoth Mari Cha IV, expected to be the fastest monohull in the world, and Peter Harrison's 115-foot Sojana, are both talking Caribbean racing. Unlike Mari Cha III which was a compromise between speed and comfort with a full but removable and light interior, Mari Cha IV is an out and out racing machine constructed entirely in prepreg carbon/Nomex - eight feet shorter and 50% lighter. This five-sail schooner with a 21-foot canting keel and ten tonnes of water ballast to counteract the all-up sail area in excess of 16,800 square feet, is currently in Newport, RI waiting for a weather window to attempt the west to east transatlantic record. Mari Cha IV, it appears, is also planning to smash the 24 hour record during its trans-Atlantic crossing. In between various record attempts a week of fun in the sun is planned at Antigua Sailing Week.
And although the full itinerary will not be confirmed until after its sea trials between now and November, Sojana is expected to be coming out to play as well. Peter Harrison, the man behind the GBR Challenge for the 2000/3 America's Cup, owns the new £8.7 million carbon fibre toy that - although may not be giving Mari Cha IV a huge run for her money - will be no slouch around the Caribbean cans.
Sojana, designed by Bruce Farr and Russ Bowler, is a ketch-rigged, light displacement, fast cruising superyacht. With a 144-foot carbon fibre main mast with 2,982sq ft of sail, a huge 118-foot mizzen mast carrying a 2,153sqft sail and a 2,379sqft jib she'll be raced with a crew of 28. For cruising however, she'll be sailed by a permanent crew of five. And like Mar Cha IV, she's a pre-preg carbon and Nomex construction.
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| Mari Cha ducks Equation |
Bill Alcott, Caribbean racing evangelist and owner of 70-foot turbo sled Equation, is already looking forward to mixing it up with boats twice Equation's size on the start: "Two years ago, the old Equation (a dinghy maybe) was the smallest boat (at 70') on the starting line in Antigua. This new year in the Caribbean ought to be better yet.... though that seems impossible, no?"
Here's Bill's account, with accompanying photos, of one of his starts against Mari Cha two year's ago:
"The first shows Mari Cha seeming to pass us astern by many yards at the start of a race in Antigua. But if you look closely you see her mid-beam which can only mean she came very close to us with her bow. In fact, Ron Sherry, our tactician (standing at the push pit in the second picture, said to me something like "Don't look and don't stall the boat, Mari-Cha's aimed at our beam and we're on starboard." (I remember thinking the driver of Mari-Cha is 147 feet behind the bow... he better be GOOD!) When her bow went by our transom, her bow wave got me wet. It was blowing 25 that day. Who knows how fast she was going when she reached down to duck us....
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| Mari Cha "gassing Equation good" |
"The second picture was taken right after Mari-Cha tacked on starboard just after the start. Before she gassed us we were sailing upwind at 9.1 knots. When her exhaust got to us, Equation almost stopped and stood straight up. I've never experienced anything quite like that."
And of course how will they all do against the MaxZ86s, owned by messrs Disney and Plattner, also expected in the Caribbean for 2004?
For an in-depth story on Mari Cha IV visit www.dailysail.com. For the full story on Sojana visit www.yachting-world.com.
