Supernavi

Maltese Falcon & other mega sailing yachts in action

Superyacht cup in Antigua : Sensational

Antigua’s Superyacht season is well underway, and Nelson’s Dockyard has been busy, first with the Charter Yacht Meeting and then with the 1st Superyacht Cup Antigua. A unique event followed hard on the heel from the success of The Superyacht Cup in Palma, but with a change from the Mediterranean to a Caribbean style!
Following directly after the Antigua Charter Yacht Meeting, the Superyacht Cup attracted interest from many of the yachts who annually visit the Caribbean as well as new yachts from the US and Europe. The event followed broadly the same format as in Palma, held over four days with sailing on three of the days. Pursuit racing and a specially developed ‘superyacht performance assessment’ gave the very different styles and sizes of yachts a chance to compete against each other, and provided for exciting, competitive sailing for everyone. Each evening the social program displayed the best of Caribbean hospitality at the famous Superyacht Cup dock-side parties.
A lot of yachts took part in 1st Superyacht Cup Antigua including the renowned Maltese Falcon, the revolutionary 88M clipper built by Perini Navi and launched earlier this year. Also taking part was Peter Harrison’s Farr designed Sojana, who took part in SYC Palma, down from the US was Patient Falcon.With the Mirabella V ( 75m ), the largest sloop in the world putting on a great show when joining the fleet and racing against the Maltese Falcon. The two completly different vessels both showed their strenght in 20 to 24 knots tradewinds. The Maltese Falcon with full sail, pulled out well in front on the reach, whereas up-wind, Mirabella V could sail a more direct track up to the turn mark.Despite most of the attention that went to these BIG yachts, Peter Harrison's 35m Ketch, Sojana put on a great performance to win the first race. The dates for the next Superyacht Cup Antigua will be December 12th till 15th 2007. For more info

Maltese Falcon ready for it's first regatta

After it's official presentation to the public and the press by Perini in LaSpezia last June, the beautiful Maltese Falcon is on it's way to Sardenia to participate in the second Perini Navi Cup. It would be the perfect oppertunity to test it's speed and flexibilty against the more traditional Perini models of last years. Boero SuperNavi, who supplied all the paint for the yacht will be present during this years edition with it's full technical and commercial staff to follow the race and cellibrate it's 175 anniversary. The Maltese Falcon who will star also on this years Monaco Yacht Show has become the eye-catcher of 2006. The vessel that was the first Perini yacht completly build and finished in Turkey is also the first superyacht ever to be constructed as a DynaRig.The dream of owner and co-designer Tom Perkins has come true and the world can finally get to know the futuristic Megayacht.

Maltese Falcon almost ready to set sail

The 87m. Perini S/Y of owner and co-builder Tom Perkins is nearly completed and ready for the launch on the ramp of the Perini-Yildiz shipyard in Tuzla. The building of the project which was started in 2004 has been concluded this month. The instalment of the three mast will take some more days/weeks, but the trails can begin. The sail handling system of the Maltese Falcon is a never before tried out concept on a super-yacht. It will therefore also be the first DynaRig ever constructed with this concept. This idea which was first developed during the ‘70s. However at that time the technology to actually build it and make it work was not at level. Close to 40 years later the time has arrived to work out the “old “ plans and use the current technology to built the rig. Tom Perkins and Fabio Perini showed again that smart minds can create beautiful things.  The square-rigged clipper was designed by Gerry Dijkstra. The Dutch naval architect came up with some very inspiring aspects on the vessel that is from far away already an intriguing combination of hyper modern and classic Japanese style. Also in the interior is a combination of the same can be found. The sail-handling system is computer controlled. However the operating system was especially designed for this purpose. This also enables the sails to be fully automatically furled and unfurled, but if things really go wrong the sail handling motors can still be manually cranked. The masts can rotate through 180 degrees. This is achieved by hydraulic motors at the bottom of each mast. The sails are actually the lowest tech item on the vessel. They are made of plain Dacron. Reefing the yacht is achieved by furling one or more sails. The Boero Supernavi paint system seems to fit in nicely with the high quality materials that were used to create this dream.( For more Technical info see The Yacht Report issue 73) The hull was first completely plastered with a new ingenious filler assessment system designed by Ian Amstrong. After all the measurements were taken the metal springs and lining was removed and the ultra light filler of Boero was applied.