Maserati Multi 70 and Giovanni Soldini conquered the record on the Fastnet original course: 23 hours, 51 minutes and 16 seconds, with an average speed of 24,94 knots. The Italian Team is the first in the world to sail the 595 miles in less than 24 hours. The previous record, 25 hours, 4 minutes and 18 seconds, was set by Peter Cunningham’s MOD 70 PowerPlay just a month ago. The record is pending the World Sailing Speed Record Council’s ratification.
Giovanni Soldini commented: «This record, from the strategic and weather point of view, is surely the most challenging one between the three we set in the English Channel. Setting sail from Cowes, you sail to the Fastnet Rock before sailing back on the same route to Plymouth. The ideal situation would be having a complete change of weather once you get to the rock, while having the wind turn in phase with your time. It’s far from simple: for this reason I must thank meteorologist Pierre Lasnier, who has always supported me and who advises me in difficult decisions».
«The other keystone for this success was the right side rudder. For some time now, we’ve been working with the engineers from the Maserati Innovation Lab to try to improve the efficiency of the rudders, that always give us problems at high speeds. It’s also and especially thanks to the studies we did together on the kinematics that we made some changes to the rudder’s profile, as suggested by designer Guillaume Verdier: we tested the rudder for the first time during this record and we can say it passed the tests with flying colours! The first leg between the Solent and the Fastnet was very fast, we kept high average speeds very easily precisely because of the new rudder: it’s clearly in the first half of the route on port tack that we beat the record. Now we will definitively change both rudders and we can’t wait to keep working with the Maserati Innovation Lab to achieve even better results!»
Aboard Maserati Multi 70 with Giovanni Soldini: Guido Broggi, Carlos Hernandez Robayna, Oliver Herrera Perez, Gerardo Siciliano and Matteo Soldini.
For Soldini and his crew it’s the third record conquered in the English Channel, after the Plymouth-La Rochelle (12 hours, 15 minutes, 21 seconds) and the Cowes-Dinard (4 hours, 30 minutes, 49 seconds.
