Ciao Italia! Bella Mente departs Olbia, Italy today for the USA!

September 26, 2017 By Bella Mente Leave a Comment

Ciao Italia! Bella Mente Racing has officially departed the Port of Olbia, Italy for the USA today! Thank you for a great season in the Mediterranean!

(Photo Credit: Bella Mente/Oliver Dickens – September 25th, 2017)

Media Alert: Sailing World: Momo Wins Maxi Rolex Cup

September 13, 2017 By Bella Mente Leave a Comment

Momo Wins Maxi Rolex Cup

Momo claimed both the title of Maxi 72 World Champion, and the overall trophy for the Rolex Maxi Yacht Cup.

Photo via Yacht Club Costa Smeralda

Germany’s Dieter Schön and the crew of Momo claimed the 2017 Rolex Maxi 72 World Championship held off Porto Cervo. The event, run in conjunction with the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, was the closest yet.

Going into the final day, Momo held a 2.75 point lead over Dario Ferrari’s Cannonball. Ultimately after two windward-leeward races, she won by a point, the top four Maxi 72s finishing within two points.

“We feel really good. We are happy and proud to win here finally,” said Schön. “After last season we improved a lot of details in our boat and as a team – very small things multiply to make you quicker.”

Defending champion, Bella Mente of International Maxi Association Vice President Hap Fauth won today’s first race, after one aborted start when the wind went through 180°, filling in from the southeast. George Sakellaris’ Proteusclaimed the second race when the wind had picked up to 17 knots. “We sail pretty well in strong winds, but so do the other boats,” said Sakellaris.

Mini Maxi Racer was the only other class to sail windward-leewards. Here Sir Peter Ogden completed his perfect scoreline aboard his Vrolijk 72 Jethou. “The second race was a cracker, because we had good breeze and fantastic surfing at 17-18 knots,” said Ogden. “The race officer worked hard – he had one minute to get us off before the time limit…”

All other classes sailed an anticlockwise lap of the Maddalena archipelago, shortened as the 180° shift crept north. Some classes got away unscathed; others less so.

In the Wally class International Maxi Association President, Thomas Bscher and his Wally 107 Open Season claimed their second bullet of the week. “It is always nice to finish with a first place. Otherwise we had a lot of little hiccups, but then so did half the fleet,” said Bscher. “Today the race committee did a very good job and shortened course exactly where they should have. We had a very nice race.”

Runaway winner in the Wally class was Galateia of David M. Leuschen, whose second place today secured the white Wallycento victory by five points over Ferit Sahenk’s Nahita.

“It is our first win and it is a nice place to do that – the most important of the four races we’ve done,” said an elated Leuschen. “We sailed flawlessly today, but we were lucky. We fully expected not to win, because usually the wind builds during the last half of the day, helping the smaller boats. Today it went the other way.”

Winner in the Super Maxis today was the 33m WinWin, following yet another prolonged battle with Filip Balcaen’s Baltic 112, Nilaya. WinWin owner Kim Schindelhauer said: “We didn’t have such a good start, but we kept our line and made good tacks. We match raced Nilaya all the way – it was fantastic. It is good not to have a 40m rule and to have a fleet start. That gives you choices.” The break for WinWin came in the transition which Schindelhauer felt they handled better than their opposition.

Second place today was enough secure Super Maxi victory for Salvatore Trifiro’s new 32.6m long Malcolm McKeon design, Ribelle, in this, their third ever event. Helmsman on board, former America’s Cup skipper Francesco de Angelis said: “We are very happy. It was a good week for us – very good racing, definitely not easy for anyone. The boats we sail against are well optimised. We have a lot still to learn. The boat is a good all-round performer. In these races it works well.”

George Sakellaris’ Proteus claimed a final day victory to jump to second place, narrowly beating Cannonball and Bella Mente. Photo: Max Ranchi

In the Maxis, overall winner was Sir Irvine Laidlaw’s Highland Fling XI, but today was again the turn of Nefertiti, Argentinian Juan Ball’s Swan 90. “Conditions are better for us when there is less wind,” said Ball. “Our tactics worked better and the team was more focussed. The boat has been performing very well and we are surprised about that, because we are up against racers like Rambler 88.” The Swan 90 may also prefer upwind-downwind courses with less reaching.

Today, Ball said they were doing very well for the final half hour before the course was shortened.

In Mini Maxi Racer Cruiser 1, it was multiple past winner Carlo Puri Negri and his Farr 70 Atalanta II who claimed honours. “There was a little less wind and at the end it was upwind. All the other races were reaching or you just went straight. Today there were more tactics,” he said of their win.

Overall victory in this hotly contested class went to 2015 winner Roberto Lacorte and his Vismara 62 SuperNikka, by two points from Benoît de Froidmont’s Wally 60, Wallyño, having negotiated the transition three miles from the finish. “This victory went to the wire, but it confirmed our result from two years ago,” said the IMA Mini Maxi Vice President. “This is dedicated to all the crew, because they were very professional in their approach.”

Winner both today and overall in Mini Maxi Racer Cruiser 2 was the Vallicelli 80 H2O of Riccardo De Michele. “We sailed a very good race and maybe we were a little bit lucky, because when the wind shifted we were in the right place at the right moment,” he said. This result broke their week long tie with Giuseppe Puttini’s Swan 65, Shirlaf.

Of this year’s Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, International Maxi Association President Thomas Bscher said: “It has been a fabulous week with very good conditions – strong winds, no swell, no big waves. There is a little room for improve on the organisation side and we are trying to support the officials, because we want people to come back and we want to increase the number of boats.”

Prizes were awarded by YCCS Commodore Riccardo Bonadeo, President of Rolex Italy Gian Riccardo Marini, IMA President Thomas Bscher and His Highness the Aga Khan and Princess Zahra Aga Khan. In addition to the class winners the Commodore Alberini Perpetual Trophy was awarded to Will Apold, owner of Sorceress. The top scoring IMA members were: Maxi: Rambler (George David), Supermaxi: Nilaya (Filip Balcaen), Wally: Magic Carpet³ (Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones) and Mini Maxi: H2O (Riccardo De Michele).

The 2017 Maxi 72 Overall trophy went to Dieter Schön’s Momo.

Media Alert: Scuttlebutt Sailing: Max Conditions at Maxi Cup

September 8, 2017 By Bella Mente Leave a Comment

Max conditions at Maxi Cup

Published on September 7th, 2017

Porto Cervo, Italy (September 7, 2017) – A single windward-leeward race for the Maxi 72s and Wallys was held on what for all the other classes was a layday at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup. Two races were scheduled to make up for those lost earlier in the week, but, after the first was completed, the wind suddenly piped up to 28 knots causing PRO Peter Craig to suspend racing for the day.

Today’s one race was a trailblazer, showing off the strong wind and blazing sunshine for which the Costa Smeralda is famous.

Following her victory in yesterday’s second race, the new Wallycento Galateia blasted around the race track once again claiming both line honours and the win under IRC corrected time. She now leads the Wally class, 8 points ahead of the Wally 80 Nahita, with the Wally 77 Lyra a further point behind.

“It is surprising to us!” said David M. Leuschen, Galateia’s owner. “The boat is new. We raced half the season last year when the crew was new. We have improved because the crew co-ordination is better. We did a lot of work on the boat over the winter and we bought a new suit of North Sails, which we like a lot more.”

They have also been luckier. Last year, in their first outing at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, Leuschen remembers they suffered a collision and a spinnaker forestay wrap. “We haven’t had anything like that happen this time, but we are probably due for it…”

Today’s race Leuschen said was “phenomenal”. They sailed the final downwind particularly well to add distance on the water between them and the Wally 107 Open Season of International Maxi Association President, Thomas Bscher. “We saw 23 knots a couple of times and over 20 pretty consistently.”

Second today, moving her up to third behind Nikata overall in the Wally class, was the Wally 77, Lyra. Navigator Will Best said of their race: “We have a good J3, so the boat is well balanced and we are quite confident upwind. But we are really quick downwind.” On the final downwind Lyra achieved a new top speed of 16 knots. “It was good fun. At start time the wind was 14 knots and we were nervous we were under the wrong jib. But when we finished we had 24-25.”

International Maxi Association member, Dieter Schön on Momo made it three wins in a row. The German team now leads the Rolex Maxi 72 World Championship by 4.75 points.

For the 72s, the wind was typically 17-22 knots from 270-290°. “It was much more complicated than yesterday,” advised Momo’s tactician Markus Wieser. “Out of the start suddenly there was less pressure on the left and the right began paying half way up, so the boat on the windward side could hold the whole fleet out.”

Momo pulled into the lead on the first downwind, but was rolled coming into the leeward gate by Dario Ferrari’s new Cannonball. Both boats rounded the port gate mark but Momo tacked and had pulled out a significant lead at the second top mark.

Weiser believed it was the right call to cancel today’s second race. “We had puffs of up to 28 knots – it was on the edge. It would have been fun, if you’d have survived!”

A boat to benefit from the usually unfavoured right today was Alex Schaerer’s Caol Ila R. This being her first Maxi 72 inshore event of 2017, the Swiss boat has been lagging at this year’s Rolex Maxi 72 World Championship. The crew was therefore delighted to lead at the top mark.

“It shows that if you sail well the boat is still competitive against the new ones even in strong winds, when we are more optimised for lighter wind,” said Schaerer. Sadly this was not to last. Their A2 the spinnaker promptly blew up upon hoisting.

They were not alone in blowing up sails. Hap Fauth’s normally immaculate Maxi 72 Bella Mente ripped the top off her J3 four minutes into the first beat. Her crew carried out the speediest of jib changes, bareheaded. Despite this incident, they pulled up the fleet and at one point were up to second. “Everyone on the boat did a phenomenal job after the jib breakage to get us back into the race,” observed strategist Adrian Stead.

The Wallys also had their share of damage with the Wally 94 Sensei blowing up her kite as the wind filled in on the final run into the finish.

Tomorrow will be the penultimate day of racing at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup and the Mistral wind is forecast to abate to 7-12 knots.

Held for the world’s largest racing yachts, the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup is jointly organised by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, this year celebrating its 50th anniversary, and the International Maxi Association, the body sanctioned by World Sailing to represent the Maxi classes.

Racing at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup and Rolex Maxi 72 World Championship takes place from September 4th to the 9th. Fifty yachts are currently entered.

Class details – Event details – Results

Source: James Boyd / www.sailingintelligence.com

Media Alert: Sailing’s glamor tribe and the downsides of paradise – CNN

September 1, 2017 By Bella Mente Leave a Comment

Sailing’s glamor tribe and the downsides of paradise

By Rob Hodgetts, CNN

Updated 0913 GMT (1713 HKT) August 31, 2017

(CNN) If the lifestyle of a professional sailor seems implausibly glamorous, that’s because it is, but there are downsides to working in paradise.

Looking cool — while superyachts tower like white cathedrals and racing rocketships strain at their mooring lines — is not one of them.

The bronzed crews, with sun-bleached hair, big shades and matching kit, mill about the pontoon looking fit and confident, masters of their nautical universe.

The broad sterns of their multi-million dollar vessels boast of enticing home ports — George Town (Cayman Islands), Road Harbour (British Virgin Islands), Valletta (Malta), London.

Outsiders strolling the quay look on in awe. It is not hard to tell the two tribes apart.

Welcome to Porto Cervo, Sardinia, created by His Royal Highness the Aga Khan in the 1950s and now one of the world’s most upmarket yachting locations.

READ: ‘Mythical’ race – classics and rocketships

READ: World’s best superyacht designs

Porto Cervo hosts the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, hosted by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, one of the most prestigious events on the Mediterranean big-boat calendar. The boats will be inspected Saturday, skippers are briefed the following day, with racing starting on Monday.

A record 52 yachts from 60ft and upwards have turned up for a week of inshore racing and coastal sprints along the spectacular Costa Smeralda and its notorious stretches of water with names like “Bomb Alley.”

Sardinia's Costa Smeralda offers stunning sailing among rocky islands.

Sardinia’s Costa Smeralda offers stunning sailing among rocky islands.

Billionaire lifestyle

The sailors, globe-trotting guns for hire, exude an air of surf chic combined with preppy pro jock. The younger the sailor, the more disheveled the look. Much like life.

Hands are strong and coarse. Handshakes firm to crippling. Eyes crinkle into smiles, the effect of years sailing in sun and wind.

While the scene is glitzy, at least in the marina, the sailors’ office can be a dangerous salt-lashed bucking bronco with high stakes.

Chatting to the crews, the number one trade-off is not the risk but the time spent away from home and families.

“You’re part performance athlete and part hobo,” says Andy Green, a Newport, RI-based British sailor and America’s Cup commentator.

“You’re living out of a bag but living the life of a billionaire. When it’s all over you go back to your apartment or whatever and live a normal life.”

The big yacht circuit generally begins in the Caribbean with races such as the Caribbean 600 from Antigua in February and Les Voiles de Saint Barth in April before moving to the Mediterranean for the summer and regattas in oh-so chic spots like Majorca, Corfu, St Tropez, Porto Cervo and Palermo in Sicily.

Among the traveling tribe there is a distinct hierarchy at work.

At the top, at least on shore, are the owners. High-achieving businessmen with big bucks to lavish on their chosen sport. A new mainsail costs north of $160,000 and just the running costs for a summer campaign can be anything between about $1.5 million and $5.4 million.

“It’s highly competitive. All the owners are very friendly, we have drinks and invite each other to parties but on the water nobody gives you any quarter — on the water you want to kill them,” Sir Peter Ogden, owner of Maxi 72 Jethou, told CNN.

Britain’s Ogden, who built up UK company Computacenter and owns the Channel Island Jethou, adds: “The hardest part is signing the cheques. That, and steering the boat.

“But this is what I do to relax. Angst is when I go home and see the pile of envelopes.”

The Wally 107 Open Season in action during the 2016 Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup in Porto Cervo.

‘Testosterone-fueled’

To deliver the boat to these sun-drenched corners of the world and get it to the start line in one piece, the owners employ a full-time boat captain and a handful of permanent crew.

“We’re partly sailors, partly worker bees,” laughs England’s Mike Atkinson, boat captain on the Wally 107 Open Season, owned by former Bugatti boss Thomas Bscher of Germany.

His role involves logistics, crew transfers, accommodation, food, safety, maintenance and budgeting. Running costs “virtually doubled” from the previous 94ft Open Season to the current 107ft version — a “big learning curve”, says Atkinson.

“It’s a good lifestyle, you have to work hard and it’s definitely not 9-5 but it beats working in an office. I couldn’t work in an office,” adds Atkinson, who is based in Palma, Majorca, with his Spanish wife and two young kids.

He is backed up by first mate Tom Bayliss, who is responsible for all the rigging and fittings, and engineer Sally Weatherstone, an exception not just for being a woman but for being a female engineer.

“I started just crewing on boats, then I got a mate’s job, and we needed an engineer,” says Weatherstone.  “I learned on the job, and when I did my exams they said I was the third girl that had been through in 10 years.

“It is a bit blokesy, it’s a testosterone-fueled week.”

Hap Fauth's Bella Mente won the 2016 Maxi 72 world championship in Sardinia.

Hap Fauth’s Bella Mente won the 2016 Maxi 72 world championship in Sardinia.

‘Stressful’

On the Maxi 72 Bella Mente, owned by Minneapolis businessman John “Hap” Fauth, the permanent crew of four swells to 20 for racing.

Skipper Peter Henderson leads a full-time team comprising a boatbuilder, a hydraulics and winches expert, and a junior. With a bigger budget, the role of travel organizer and logistics is separate.

“We’re on the road non-stop, you ask my wife. In 2013 I was on the road 300 days,” said Henderson, who grew up sailing in Michigan.

Unlike the more cruising oriented Wally class, Bella Mente is a stripped-out racer, a black carbon shell with no frills down below.

The toilet is of the “bucket and chuck it” variety. There is no galley in day-race mode, and sleeping facilities, should they be needed for longer offshore races, are pull down canvas shelves, operated on a “hot-bunk” basis for sailors on different watches.

Last year a storm in Porto Cervo meant Henderson and another had to sleep on board and take turns to keep watch as a big sea surged into the harbor, threatening to ram her onto the dock — Bella Mente’s keel is too deep to retreat further inside the marina.

“That was stressful. More so than the racing,” said Henderson.

‘Dangerous’

While the permanent crew are the workhorses, the stardust comes from the tacticians and other members of the “brains trust,” the big-money signings making the racing decisions.

Among those calling the shots this week are Open Season’s Jochen Shuemann, a multiple Olympic champion and former sporting director for America’s Cup outfit Alinghi, and former America’s Cup-winning tactician and skipper Brad Butterworth on Jethou.

The tactician can also have an input on the rest of the crew, often beginning with the top pros in their specializations.

Kiwi Warwick Fleury, who has competed in eight America’s Cups with Team New Zealand and Switzerland’s Alinghi, is the mainsail trimmer on Jethou.

“It sounds glamorous and probably looks glamorous, but the downside is time traveling and away from home,” said Fleury, who will join 30 or so other sailors for a charter flight to Mahon, Menorca for the TP52 Worlds as soon as this is over.  “But even then, a bay day is not all that bad.”

Crew work is vital, everyone has their role onboard.

Like all freelancers, the next gig comes through contacts, word of mouth and old-fashioned cold calling. Some have to work harder than others.

“There’s not huge job security. And it can be dangerous,” adds Green, who was once skippering a yacht in Sardinia when a crewman broke six ribs and later lost his spleen when he was thrown against the rigging.

“You have to be enthusiastic, you’ve got to keep current, and keep winning.

“It can be challenging. It’s all about building relationships. You sometimes have to have difficult and frank conversations about how to make a boat go fast. Some people have very strong opinions, so you have to be a diplomat and a racer, it’s a difficult balance.

“But you go to some amazing venues and meet some really interesting people.  It can be incredibly rewarding.”

Bella Mente departs for Maxi72 Worlds

August 25, 2017 By Bella Mente Leave a Comment

Bella Mente is wrapping up our spring and summer season in Palma De Mallorca, Spain! The cradle and containers are all packed and have departed for Porto Cervo. Bella Mente goes back in the water this morning and depending on weather the shore crew will depart for Sardinia this Saturday! The 2017 Maxi 72 Worlds start on September 3rd, 2017 in Porto Cervo, Italy. (Photo Credit: Captain Peter C Henderson)