21 days, 19 hours, 32 minutes and 54 seconds - this is the new reference time for the 5334 nautical mile route on the old tea trade route from San Francisco to Shanghai. Italian professional skipper Giovanni Soldini and his crew, including Boris Herrmann as navigator, equalled the record on Monday morning.
"We are really pleased," said Soldini on arrival in Shanghai: "The time we achieved will be hard to beat."
The Volvo 70 "Maserati" left San Francisco on 10 May. During the 7392 nautical miles actually sailed, the former "Ericsson 3" achieved an average speed of 14.1 knots. "As in the past, "Maserati" proved to be an excellent boat and the crew efficient and professional," summarised Soldini: "21 days is a really impressive time. The conditions were ideal for almost the entire route.
Soldini was joined on board by the Italians Guido Broggi, Andrea Fantini, Francesco Malingri and Marco Spertini, the Chinese Jianghe "Tiger" Teng, the Spaniard Oliver Herrera Perez, the Swede Andreas Axelsson and the German Boris Herrmann.
He flies back to Hamburg tomorrow and will soon be making a guest appearance in front of his home crowd. With the MOD 70 "Oman Sail", he will be taking part in the Welcome Race of Kiel Week - and chasing a record, his own from last year.
Boris Herrmann exclusively summarises his impressions of the latest record-breaking trip on "Maserati" for YACHT online:
"Here you go, who wants to be next? We've done it again, opened up a new route that can now be used for other people's sporting or commercial ambitions. In our case, as is almost always the case with these projects, it was both. China and Asia have become the most important sales markets for Maserati, just like for many other major brand manufacturers around the world.
Who comes into question? Probably not the "Comanche". Nor do ships like "Esimit", as hydraulic winches exclude them from this category of records. Perhaps a team that trains extensively for the Volvo and has business in Asia. There is certainly a project - albeit still in the shadows - that has these records in its sights. I'm also involved in it. So it will most likely be us who try to break this record. There aren't that many crazy people.
14 knots average, 340 miles per day on average - and that for 21.8 days: 7392 miles.
You have to like it. Fortunately, the conditions on this trip were ideal: trade winds for most of the journey. After passing the Golden Gate Bridge, the starting line, we sailed an hour on an upwind course, from then on a quick succession of sail changes via various genoas, fractional zero, A3 to A4, the large spinnaker, the most important sail on this leg. There were several changes in short light wind moments back to the flatter A3 gennaker until we had really arrived in the trade wind just two days before Hawaii.
Hawaii is on the route weather-wise. It's also nice to be able to call home briefly, see some green land and reminisce. The jet effect blows us in a wild ride between Oahu and Kauai and quickly on to the south-west, the zone of the strongest trade winds.
From here it will be a full ten uninterrupted full-throttle days until the next sail change. That alone is a record in itself! Who can sail 4000 nautical miles in one go under spinnaker without taking it down once? The short piece of halyard between the masthead and the sail head says thank you. It then gets a new coat.
My last report on YACHT online was about the fantastic surfing moments that fortunately characterised most of our everyday life at sea during this month. Unfortunately, the last week was not so blessed with wind, partly rainy, grey, even chilly - an unimaginable situation for us. This last week was long. Nevertheless, we were lucky. If we had had a typhoon in the region, there would have been no regular wind at all for a long time.
Then islands come into view. Where the Mariana Trench is, there is also a sizeable group of islands of the kind that you might want to explore later on a cruise boat. Among them is the craziest island I have ever seen: Sofi Gan (Japan). It disappears ghostly behind us in the rain and fog-shrouded dawn. We pass it, half amused, half shuddering at the idea that the Volvo team "Vestas Wind" had not rammed into an atoll, but into a tower like this. You can only see it with an extreme chart zoom. Food for the imaginations of this stimulus-hungry crew: how about building a super-expensive luxury guesthouse on top?
Speaking of distraction: I usually spent the midday free watch with a coffee and Blackberry in the shade, eagerly trying to get ahead with all my other plans and projects as best I could from here. A fantastic way to forget the time. Blackberry? Yes, an economy measure: apparently the operating system transmits mails particularly efficiently with a small data volume - that's what our comparisons have shown.
Near China, everything is degenerating: I haven't had any snacks for a long time, but now I'm running out of other supplies as well as the main courses, including my coffee. There's a lot of rubbish floating in the sea, everywhere you look you see dilapidated fishing boats without AIS, rusty freighters that don't answer the radio, and strange islands with murderous currents all around them. A huge volcano had just erupted on one of them. Maybe that's why the weather models were useless. There's hardly any gradient, and we're lucky that even in light 6-knot winds we're still making progress at 10 knots. This last week is bringing our average down quite a bit. On the good days, we sometimes managed 500 miles. Golden miles.
China welcomes us with grey cold and murky water. Giovanni's brow is furrowed. He finds out by email that the fees for pilots, harbour berth, customs and agents cost as much as a Maserati Ghibli. Pleasure craft are a completely foreign concept in China. As a result, the pilot entering the Wusong River is having his greatest day: a spinnaker ride into the city. Traffic or depths seem to be of little interest to him. Yet the volume of freighters is crazy.
The first beer with the gang tastes fantastic in the afternoon sun in the cockpit with a view of the TV tower opposite. After travelling with these guys, there's a squat feeling. For me, it's part of the appeal of these adventures, these long times away from home. What have you missed out on in real life? Far too much! You don't get to do this often. All the more reason for me to consciously savour immersing myself in civilisation again and seeing everything with new eyes, as if an alien had just come from the moon.
We earn these new places honestly. Once we arrive, we don't go off to look at museums (unfortunately), but work on the boat with locals or do some tasks first. This allows you to experience the place in a completely different way than tourists do, quickly get in touch with the people and get a normal working day feeling. There's always a bit of time for sightseeing after all.
This time it's only for a short time. This time it's Shanghai. An Italian investment banker who adores Giovanni invites everyone to an opulent evening. He has us picked up in limos and taken to one of the best Italian restaurants (he says). The most impressive story of the evening for me is the smog. In Milan, traffic is restricted when the air quality index is 25. Here, 150 is considered a good day. Some days have 500 and people are then asked to stay indoors. That doesn't sound very liveable and totally crazy.
That's it for me now with this ship. Five years and many great moments. How many places have we made our own during this project? Looking back, San Francisco, Cape Town, Honolulu, Rio and New York stand out for me. Great sporting moments and great cities where we spent a lot of time. I now know New York better than Hamburg. That's a bit sad, but also kind of cool, and it's going to change anyway.
Tonight I'm having a big dinner with the head of Maserati Asia, and then I'm flying home tomorrow. I've got a lot of catching up to do, and the next trip is already waiting, with the MOD70 of "Oman Sail". It will be a foretaste of "Maserati-2" next year. A kind of acquisition trip. Maserati will buy one of these trimarans to send us on big tours again."
Jochen Rieker
Herausgeber YACHT
