The first full-electric racing multihull has left Los Angeles for the 52nd edition of the 2.225-mile Pacific Ocean race finishing in Honolulu.
Maserati Multi70 and Giovanni Soldini have left the California coast departing for the Transpacific Yacht Race, also called “Transpac”. The 52nd edition of the now classic biennial ocean race, organized by the Transpacific Yacht Club and first held in 1906, started in Los Angeles and will finish in Honolulu, Hawaii, covering a distance of about 2.225 miles.
For Giovanni Soldini and the entire team, this is an important new sporting and technical test because Maserati Multi70 is the first racing multihull to be powered by a full electric system. In order to electrify the trimaran and allow it to travel in total autonomy without limiting its performance capabilities, solar panel surfaces have been upgraded and a special battery, particularly light and dense, has been developed. Research, innovation, technology, and performance have always been at the heart of the Maserati Multi70 project which, with the support of the Maserati Innovation Lab engineers, continues testing the efficiency of its electric system and the improvement of its performance.
The Transpacific Yacht Race’s fleet - made of more than sixty boats – gathered, over a staggered schedule of three days, on the starting line off Point Fermin, where the signal for the multihulls was given on July 1st at 11:55 a.m. local time (6:55 p.m. UTC; 8:55 p.m. Italian time). Direct rivals to Maserati Multi70 are the two American MOD 70s Argo, with skipper Jason Carroll and Brian Thompson as navigator, and Orion, with skipper Justin Shaffer. On board together with Giovanni Soldini the professional team composed of Guido Broggi (ITA), Oliver Herrera Perez (ESP), Francesco Malingri (ITA), Francesco Pedol (ITA), Matteo Soldini (ITA) and Lucas Valenza-Troubat (FRA).
“It will be very important to get into the wind first in order to start across with a wind that will turn more and more stern in the following days. We will end up gybing coming over Hawaii,” says Giovanni Soldini. “We will have to sail a fairly high course, at risk of collisions with floating objects and also, from a technical point of view, it will definitely be a tough race for us because we will not be flying. We had a customs problem with the support container and so we will not be able to count on the best performing set of sails and flying foils, and that is a pity because in the transoceanics they give their best. But, as usual, we will sell our skin dearly!"
The racecourse passes near the Pacific trash vortex, the so-called plastic island, which poses a greater risk of collisions. Maserati Multi70, which is participating in this competition for the third time after the 2017 and 2019 editions, has experienced this firsthand, and in both cases, it suffered damage caused by colliding with objects in the sea: the first time losing the right rudder, the second time destroying a meter of the bow of the left hull due to the impact at night with a very large object.
Along with the Bermuda Race on the East Coast of the United States, the Transpacific Yacht Race is one of the longest-running offshore races in the world, and since its first edition in 1906, it has grown in importance to become the most relevant competitive event in the Pacific. From the starting line in Pt. Fermin, Los Angeles, the course calls for the fleet to leave Catalina Island on the left and, with weather conditions typical of this time of year, sail with headwinds for much of the race to the finish line at Diamond Head, Honolulu, Hawaii.
To follow the challenge:
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Race Tracker: https://yb.tl/transpac2023