PEDAL TO THE METAL — T
BJOERN KILS
here must be a zillion ways to celebrate New Year's Eve. But it would be hard to top the radical way legendary Italian ocean racer Giovanni Soldini and his international crew ushered in 2013: Despite freezing temperatures, they set sail from New York Harbor aboard their VOR 70 Maserati, headed out into gale-
Time to celebrate! With a fireboat escorting her, 'Maserati' entered the Bay, only 47 days after departing New York on New Year's Eve.
SPREAD & INSET: BJOERN KILS
force winds with swells up to 15 feet high, and rocketed south toward the equator at speeds of up to 34 knots — the nautical equivalent, you might say, of red-lining a sleek Maserati sports car down a straight-line race track. There was no Champagne that first night, though. That would come 47 days later, after the nine-man team had passed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, thus bettering — by 10 days — Yves Parlier's 1998 New York-to-San Fran-
cisco monohull sailing record set aboard Aquitaine Innovations. To be clear, the team actually broke two records: The World Sailing Speed Record Council's (WSSRC) course is from New York's Ambrose Light — which, ironically, no longer exists as a fixed navigational light, having been run over by a freighter in 2008 — to the Golden Gate Bridge. That benchmark is now 47d, 0h, 42m. The more traditional anchorageto-anchorage route, which memorializes the clipper Flying Cloud's famous time of 89d, 8h (set in 1854 and not broken until 1989), runs from a starting line between the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan's North Cove Marina, and a finish line between Alcatraz and Pier 39. This effort is called the Clipper Challenge Cup and is administered by the Manhattan Sailing Club. The target for future challengers is now 47d, 2h, 33m.
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oldini and crew traveled 14,200 miles — only a thousand miles farther than the minimal rhumbline distance After being teased by excruciatingly light air on her approach, 'Maserati' glides toward the finish line, having clocked 14,200 miles.
— averaging roughly 12.6 knots. From the very beginning, Lady Luck seemed to have been riding along with them. The strong winds continued, so that after three days Maserati had covered 1,200 miles. Throughout the trip the team experienced a bare minimum of gear failures and injuries — especially when measured against many previous attempts. But it would be completely naive to chalk up this stunning achievement to luck alone. Led by Soldini, 47, who's done two around-the-world races and 30 transatlantics, the eight additional crewmen, who range in age from 26 to 43, possess a phenomenal pool of talent. Collectively, the team has excelled in many of the world's most demanding offshore races aboard both mono- and multihulls, including the Volvo Ocean Race, Around Alone, the Barcelona World Race and Trophée Jules Verne.
They entered the South Pacific trades at 27°S and began blasting toward the equator on a screaming 20-knot reach. As we reported last month, Maserati hit the easterly trade winds on day six and passed through the Atlantic doldrums a few days later without enduring too much shifty air — although they did suffer a near-knockdown during a sudden gust. While diving down the South Atlantic they faced their toughest tactical deci-