There were sighs of relief from both the owner and crew of the radical superyacht Raven when, following two and a half years of trials and development, the semi-foiling Baltic 111 this Sunday morning successfully completed her first ever event, the RORC Transatlantic Race. Raven was also the monohull line honours victor into Antigua, winning the IMA Trophy which was presented to the 17-strong team by The Hon. Charles ‘Max’ Fernandez, Minister of Tourism & Economic Development for Antigua and Barbuda.
While this was the first time the RORC Transatlantic Race has officially finished in Antigua, in 2021 the pandemic forced it to divert there from Grenada. On that occasion the monohull line honours and the IMA Trophy went to Johannes Schwartz's VO70 Green Dragon in an elapsed time of 9 days 17 hours 53 miles 40 seconds. In comparison, Raven’s 6 days 22 hours 27 minutes 47 seconds destroyed this record, albeit just under two days slower than the time of the lead multihull, Jason Carroll’s Argo. This turboed MOD70 trimaran arrived on Friday in 4 days 23 minutes 51 seconds and 15 minutes, almost two and a half hours ahead of her rival Erik Maris’ Zoulou.
On the sailing side Raven has many of the same physical attributes of America’s Cup AC75 such as giant flip-up foils, but unlike the AC75 she has a keel, 10 tonnes of water ballast each side and is only designed to semi-foil (ie her hull is regularly airborne but only back to her keel). She also has the plush interior and modcons of a well-appointed superyacht, albeit the absolute ultimate in minimalism and ultra-light weight.
She was conceived to be the world’s fastest superyacht but beyond that Raven’s owner was broad-minded enough to make no plans for her until he and the team could see how she was evolving. This proved so positive after some 15000 miles of sea trialling, including two transatlantic crossings, that the team felt confident enough to enter their giant luxury speedster in her first race. To get to the start line involved the Rating Office coming up with an IRC rating for Raven (1.905), albeit having gained some experience from Roberto Lacorte’s 60ft full-foiler Flying Nikka.
While ideal for reaching, Raven’s foiler concept isn’t strong upwind, nor deep running, so the almost exclusively dead downwind conditions she experienced in the RORC Transatlantic Race were not best for her. “We haven’t really worked on the VMG angles and we don’t really have the sails for that and that hasn’t really been the plan. It means that we sailed a much longer than the actual course, gybing down the road,” admitted Raven’s project manager, round the world veteran Klabbe Nylöf. “Apart from that the whole trip went fantastically well. The boat performed as well as we possibly could hope. We have proved it is a fast boat and to be able to finish a race is always good for your self-confidence.”
Getting to the finish, then winning line honours, were the priorities and yet early on in the race Raven was leading overall on IRC corrected time. As the front runners put in their first big gybe west from the African coast, Raven was regularly making 25 knots, only 2-3 knots slower than the MOD70s. “It is new territory to sail constantly at that high speed, but this time we took the boat a little bit further as it was a race,” Nylöf continued. “But the boat had no problems handling it.”
However in hindsight they perhaps gybed west too early and as the wind veered they were forced north towards the ridge and its light winds where their boat speed dropped to 10-12 knots. This was compounded as sailing into less pressure also forced them to sail an even hotter angle, pushing Raven still further north. “It cost us to work ourselves out of it,” admitted Nylöf. “You don’t see every gybe we did trying to get out! It was pretty hard downwind in 14 knots of wind speed.”
Three days out from the finish they got back into solid 20-25 knot trade wind conditions but with this came tropical squalls. Fortunately these didn’t exceed 29 knots and the crew soon got used to them. “We don’t have big gennakers, we have furling sails, so that gives you some degree of security, because they are easy to furl. But at night when you see there are a lot of squalls, you sail with one reef for safety. In one of the squalls we reached 35 knots.”
While others have yet to finish, Raven looks very likely to have won IRC Zero ahead of the VO70 Sisi and the Truly Classic 128 Linnea Aurora, currently second and third as well as the Swan 128 Be Cool. She was also looking to be a strong contender to make the podium in IRC Overall – a phenomenal result in her first competitive outing.