Design #323 ILC Maxi

running in Transpac. She employs two quite different configurations of displacement and sail plan for the two events.

In Big Boat trim, she displaces 24.4 tons. Her carbon construction and deep bulb keel produce very high stability, and she carries a conventional fractional rig with fractional spinnakers for strong upwind and all-round performance.

For Transpac, her nearly 3 tons of internal ballast is removed and a smaller mainsail fitted, along with much larger near-masthead spinnakers. This orients the boat's performance downwind and as close as possible to the ILC MAXI performance limits reaching and running in 10 and 20 knot winds.

With careful design refinement, it was possible to do this with one keel and rudder, allowing the boat to change configurations quickly without costly changes and new hull measurements, to suit a variety of California and worldwide racing venues. The full race round-the-buoys rig also becomes suitably conservative for offshore work with the reduced stability in Transpac trim and carries no significant penalty for this use.

The interior is pure IMS Racing Division with the only concessions being a freezer and big galley for decent meals and a workable shower in the forepeak to freshen up during long races. Pipe berths can be added as necessary beyond the minimum of 6 berths to suit requirements of any venue.

The deck layout has all the ingredients to be very efficient for round-the-buoys racing but with minimum of components to save weight and an arrangement that also is compact enough to work well for a long downwind race such as Transpac with limited crew numbers.

Builder Cookson Boats of New Zealand, with Farr International, Inc. providing project management, made an absolutely superb commitment to getting the boat produced in time for Transpac under very trying conditions. Construction was originally planned to begin in the third quarter of 1994 but was drastically delayed by the very late birth of the 1994 ILC MAXI rule. The design then had to go through several review periods during construction early in 1995 to be re-optimized to the 1995 ILC MAXI limits as these and the 1995 IMS rule became available. SAYONARA was launched very close to the original schedule and made her racing debut winning line honors and a new record for the Oakland to Catalina race in June.