Maxi winners return for 16th 151 Miglia-Trofeo Cetilar - Registered entries total 229
by James Boyd / International Maxi Association 29 May 15:36 PDT
30 May - 1 June 2025
Furio Benussi's 100ft ARCA SGR is the surefire line honours favourite this year © Studio Taccola
Setting sail from Livorno, Italy tomorrow (Friday 30 May) will be the 16th edition of the 151 Miglia-Trofeo Cetilar. This will be the fourth event in the International Maxi Association's 2024-25 Mediterranean Maxi Offshore Challenge, which began with last October's Rolex Middle Sea Race.
Organised between the Yacht Club Repubblica Marinara di Pisa, Yacht Club Punta Ala and Yacht Club Livorno, the race this year will follow a new route.
As usual it will start from off Livorno bound for an upwind mark and to a mark off Marina di Pisa. But from there, rather than heading towards Corsica to round the Giraglia rock, the new route leaves the island of Gorgano (half way to Giraglia) to port and then bears south to the island of Pianosa (southwest of Elba). The fleet will then head due east towards the regular turning mark of Formiche di Grosseto but then instead of heading directly to the finish line off Punta Ala, they must now round a mark in the Piombino Channel (immediately off the northeast tip of Elba) before back tracking to the finish. The new course is effectively a tour of the Tuscan archipelago and now completely avoids the Corsica Channel Traffic Separation Scheme to the east of Cap Corse. It also maintains the race's original 151 mile length.
Registered entries for the race total 229 including 13 in the maxi class (IRC Over 60). Here the scratch boat once again will be Furio Benussi's ARCA SGR. The Trieste-based 100 footer has claimed line honours in the 151 Miglia-Trofeo Cetilar three times and in 2022 won the maxi class outright under IRC.
"I am really happy about the new course around the Tuscan islands," says Benussi. But as to what will happen during the race, he and his team are unsure: "It is completely strange, because we have five weather models and none of them agree. The French model shows that we can be in Punta Ala at 3am, in 13 hours." 13 hours might prove fast enough to break the race record, set by George David's Rambler 88 in 2019, of 13 hours 50 minutes 43 seconds. However Benussi remains sceptical: "The other models show light winds overnight. The difference in the models has our finish times ranging from 0300 -1000 at the moment! So we are not so confident."
Aside from ARCA SGR another past winner returning is Carlo A Puri Negri's well-campaigned Farr 70 Atalanta II, the race's defending maxi champion. Several other competitors from last year are back, including Guido Paolo Gamucci's canting keel Mylius 60 Cippa Lippa X, which finished second and is coming in hot directly from last week's IRC Maxi European Championship. Third last year was the 78ft ILC maxi Nice, formerly Alessandro Del Bono's supremely successful Capricorno, entered by ICE Yachts President Marco Malgara, while one of his company's 66 footers, José Agnaldo Andrade Júnior's ICE 66RS Tapioca is also competing.
Other winners are returning: Giancarlo Gianni's Durlindana is back however this time with Durlindana 4, a Swan 601, replacing his Carroll Marine 60, which won the maxi class in the light airs race two years ago. Back after a long break is Bruno Veronesi who won the maxi class in 2017 aboard his previous X-65 Azzurro VI. This year he is campaigning the present Azzurro, a Swan 78.
Other past competitors include Alois Neukirchen's Mylius 66RS Schorch, Luigi Sala's Vismara 62 Yoru, Franz Wilhelm Baruffaldi Preis's Mylius 60 FD Manticore and Alessandro Pini's Grand Soleil Maxi One Ely J.
Back racing for the first time after an unscheduled hiatus is Dario Castiglia's Baltic 65 RE/MAX One2. She had an unfortunate encounter with a rock during the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup in 2023 and has only recently been fully recommissioned. "We had to pull everything out and rebuild the boat," Castiglia admits. "In the meantime we have made some improvements, new rigging and renewed some of the equipment that was getting old."
This will be Castiglia's sixth 151 Miglia-Trofeo Cetilar and he is happy with the new course. "It will be an interesting and very technical because we are expecting light winds, but I don't think the new course will make much difference compared to before. We are skipping the Giraglia where we often got stuck in no wind. Hopefully we may get some more wind this time, but according to the forecast it doesn't look too good. The main difference is that the old course went immediately south of Elba where it was very tricky in northerly winds. The new course takes us way down." RE/MAX One2's tactician for this race is Danish former America's Cup skipper and match racer Jes Gram-Hansen.
Race founder, long term backer and International Maxi Association board member, Roberto Lacorte returns with his foiling 60ft FlyingNikka, competing in the ORC fleet and no doubt hoping for the same fast French forecast for which the ARCA SGR crew are dreaming.
As usual the 151 Miglia-Trofeo Cetilar will feature the epic parties for which it is famous. These include tonight's crew party and then, after the finish, a sit-down dinner for 1800 in the spectacular seaside grounds of the Yacht Club Punta Ala, complete with live music, DJ and fireworks display.
The 2024-25 IMA Mediterranean Maxi Offshore Challenge comprises seven events concluding with the Palermo-Montecarlo in mid-August.
See the current leaderboard from the 2024-25 IMA Mediterranean Maxi Offshore Challenge here
More information on the 151 Miglia-Trofeo Cetilar: 151miglia.it
For more on the International Maxi Association visit www.internationalmaxiassociation.com or see the 2025 IMA Yearbook