This season Giovanni Soldini and his crew aboard the Italian trimaran Maserati Multi70 will take part in two of yacht racing’s most well-known offshore races – the RORC Caribbean 600 in February and the Transpacific Yacht Race in July.
Joining Soldini for the RORC Caribbean 600 will be the familiar faces of Guido Broggi, François Robert, Oliver Herrera, Carlos Hernandez, John Elkann, Francesco Malingri. New to the Maserati uniform will be Italian Vittorio Bissaro who joins the crew fresh from a fifth place in the Nacra 17 catamaran class at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
Racing 600-miles around a complex inter-island course from Antigua and back makes the RORC Caribbean 600 a tough enough challenge without factoring in the strong prevailing trade winds that will keep the sailors on their toes non-stop.
Contrastingly, the Transpacific Yacht Race (better known as simply ‘The Transpac’) is a more of straight line blast from Los Angeles, California 2,225-miles out to Honolulu on the island of Hawaii.
In the RORC Caribbean 600 which starts on February 20, Maserati Multi70 will be up against the non-foiling MOD70 – Phaedo3 from the USA. In 2016 the American crew set a new line honours race record time of 31 hours, 59 minutes and four seconds.
Soldini’s crew will use both races to help them develop the Maserati Multi70 trimaran to its full potential as an offshore foiling raceboat. However, the boat will remain in ‘development mode’ for the first event with a conventional MOD70 foil on the right-hand side and a custom foiling daggerboard on the left. It is planned for the second foiling daggerboard to be fitted in time for the Transpac.
credit@Tiziano Canu