Canting Keel technology delivers greater speed to Maxi racing

Built as the biggest and baddest Maxi yacht in history, and using the very latest technology, from water ballast to carbon fibre, Alfa Romeo had never been beaten in two years of competitive sailing.

Skipper Neville Chrichton is one of Australia's Captain's of industry, also having competed with distinction in two sports at an international level - car racing and yacht racing. His Shockwave series of yachts had won a lot of races, but he wanted to win the Sydney-Hobart and it had eluded him. So he set out to build the Maxi to end all maxis, and took the Sydney-Hobart, then marched around the world over the following 18 months winning every race he contested.

The boat had NEVER been beaten prior to the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup yet Chrichton knew before the event that his run would end. The reason was simple.He had engineered a competitive advantage with the Alfa Romeo's movable water ballast - six tonnes of it pumped around the bottom of the boat enabled the boat to be better balanced and capable of using the power its huge sails delivered.

When the boat was raced in the Sydney Hobart event, which banned this system, extensive modifications were made and weight had to be added to the boat to achieve a sailable result.

This year, the technology of moveable ballast was about to be bested by the canting keel - the next generation of canting keel yachts made their debut at the Rolex Maxi World and, as Neville Crichton had predicted, they were quicker than Alfa Romeo.

Disney's New Zealand-built Pyewacket won the title, ahead of Australian wine maker Robert Oatley's Wild Oats and US Healthcare magnate Randall Pitman's Genuine Risk. Both Wild Oats and Genuine Risk were built in Sydney by elite yacht builders McConaghy Yachts to Reichel/Pugh designs, as was Alfa Romeo some two years earlier.

All three of the placegetters were of the new canting keel design, reflecting the rapid movement of trends and innovations in super-maxi design in recent years and all three boats took a win during the six race series, with Pyewacket taking four of the six races.

Alfa Romeo had gone from never having been beaten, to not even running a place in any of the events - it's best result was fourth. "Canting keel is regarded as the new frontier in sailing technology," explains Neville Crichton.