The Tea Route: Giovanni Soldini sets out for London (from Hong Kong)
by Guy Nowell, Sail-World Asia 18 Jan 2018 11:26 PST
Maserati Multi70 chasing the Tea Route record. Giovanni Soldini, Alex Pella, Guido Broggi, Oliver Perez, Sebastien Audigane © Guy Nowell
While the airwaves are buzzing with the imminent arrival of the Volvo Ocean Race, there’s something else that’s been happening in the sailing world in Hong Kong. In Causeway Bay, next to the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, Giovanni Soldini and his crew have been preparing to depart Hong Kong on a voyage that is longer than any of the legs of the VOR: a tilt at the Hong Kong to London record.
Back in the days of the tea clippers, the race was to claim the premium for landing the year’s first cargo of tea at Tilbury. In the Great Tea Race of 1866, Taeping beat Ariel by a skinny 28 minutes after a race of 15,000 miles. It was the last time the premium was paid, as steamships were proving to be faster than sail, and Taeping and Ariel shared the bonus.
There’s no other boat in this race, so it is now simply against the clock – and against the ghost of Gitana XIII, the 120ft catamaran that set the current record of 41 days 21 hours in 2008.
Soldini’s boat is rather smaller; Maserati Multi70 is a 70ft MOD trimaran weighing in at a mere 6 tons and with a crew of only five. “Lightness is everything for an ocean passage on a multihull,” says Soldini, who is the holder of numerous long distance sailing records, including New York to San Francisco, set in 2013 on a previous ‘Maserati,’ a Volvo 70, in a time of 47 days. Curiously, the voyage from Hong Kong to London is almost the same distance – 15,000 nm.
This is not the sort of adventure that attracts novices. Soldini’s crew includes Alex Pella and Sebastian Audigane, members of Francis Joyon’s record-breaking IDEC Sport team that are the present holders of the round-the-world (crewed) record. Guido Broggi and Oliver Herrera Perez make up the numbers.
Maserati Multi70 weighs a mere six tons. “This is a very little boat for a long voyage,” says Soldini. “We are fast, but we are small, and we cannot take on big seas as if we were sailing a VO70 or Gitana 13. We will have to use our speed to stay out of trouble. A 3m sea is big stuff for a MOD70, and this is why we have to be light – five crew and some food and fuel make up 20% of the weight of the boat.” To keep the kilos at bay, Maserati Multi70 has been fitted with additional solar panels since arriving in Hong Kong. “This means we have to carry less fuel for the generator which we use principally to charge batteries and make water.”
“The first 2,000nm are going to be slow – we know that. We should get a good blow out of Hong Kong, and after that the meteo is very unpredictable. There’s a lot of dangerous stuff out there – debris in the water, rocks, reefs, fishing boats with crazy lights (or no lights at all!) and we will need to pay extra attention. Down past Singapore and across the Equator is always light wind, but then we go through the Sunda Strait past Krakatau [ie between Sumatra and Java] and once we get into the Indian Ocean we will have ‘real’ wind.” Soldini pauses, “but tropical storms can also eat the wind, so we have to be careful with our positioning when there are low pressure systems in the area.”
The end of the voyage to London will be testing as well. “February in the North Atlantic is winter time, and that will require a different kind of attention; we really don’t want to be in a big storm in this little boat.”
Maserati Multi70 departed from the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club this evening in glorious late afternoon sunshine. By the time she reached the WSSRC official line between Shek O Rock and Tung Chung, it was completely dark [sorry, no photos there] and slipped away into the night in 12kts of breeze from the northeast and a promise of more offshore. You can follow the progress of Soldini and his crew online, chasing (or leading) the ghost of Gitana 13. After 8 hours Maserati was 88nm ahead of the existing record, and chewing up the miles at 22kts. The game’s afoot!
Go to: www. http://maserati.soldini.it/cartography/