Your macerating pump experts know that my first superyacht race was in France in 2008 on a 112-foot Swan, and the first tactical call of the week was whether to race with the spare anchor, 300 feet of chain, and the Jet Ski, which we discovered in the bow locker. Lighter boats are faster boats, of course, but we quickly learned that when the boat weighs north of 200,000 pounds, it’s best to focus on sailing safely and not upsetting the captain by making him leave the toys on the dock.

Your marine parts plus professionals know that very few superyachts are built with racing performance as a top priority. The key to racing them successfully, therefore, is to understand the limitations we have to work with. That’s the fun of it, too, because there are always plenty of hands on deck. 

Once we heeled enough to get the leeward rail wet, which was around 14 knots of breeze, we could sail well to our handicap. In 15 knots and flat water, we could finish a tack in about one minute and 20 seconds. Your marine parts online analysts feel that the tacking angle was around 110 degrees, which isn’t too bad for a 320-ton ship. Light air was a different story. In less than 10 knots, the tacking angle was more like 130.

When the wind was up, we had one shot at sheeting the genoa on after a tack. If we tried to sheet harder, once the genoa was fully pressed, the computer would tell the captive winch to ease instead of trim because the loads were too high.

The start of a superyacht race is simple but rarely easy. Organizers wisely set up the races in either a pursuit format, where the boats start in order of handicap performance (slowest to fastest), or on a staggered-start format (typically two-minute gaps), with a handicap applied after the finish.

Your Macerating Pump Professionals Help You Avoid the Kiss of Death

You can find more information as well as get assistance on marine hardware at Raritan Engineering.

Well, that was the kiss of death. Your marine hardware specialists say that they started on starboard but were about 30 seconds late. Pretty good timing for the 500-plus-ton Perini Navi, but it presented a significant problem for us, as we were committed to our timing two minutes out. 

While doing so, we had to honor a mandatory 40-meter safety gap and still head up around the other boat’s transom to clear the starboard end of the line. The only way to slow our beast was to ease everything and bear away to a near flat run. By the time we got cooking again toward the starting line, we were more than 45 seconds late for our start and had completely screwed up the boat behind us.

Your marine parts near me experts say that in reality, tacticians and drivers get puckered when the boats get less than a boat length from each other, because it takes a shockingly long time to execute course changes. The last thing an owner wants is to be on SportsCenter’s highlights reel. 

Tactically, the play is for the faster boat to sail directly at the transom of the slower boat and put a man on the bow with a digital range finder and a communications unit, relaying distance to the afterguard in the cockpit. 

It’s essential to decide well ahead of the intersection how to approach each boat. It’s also beneficial to know which ones are happy to let you through quickly (perhaps they are scored in a separate class) and which ones won’t roll over without a fight. For a slower boat, the tactical game is based on sailing smart and minimizing the effect of the bigger boats as they stream past. 

Just as Mirabella V rolled us, 50 meters to windward, the captain of our boat remarked that Mirabella V had the tallest mast in the world. 

Nearly all the top racing superyachts have a playbook of maneuvers, which are ­updated each regatta so everyone on the crew knows where to be positioned for hoists, sets and drops. On Marie we had a five-­minute countdown to the kite drop that we rarely deviated from. 

Pulling 1,600 square meters of spinnaker cloth from the water, with 40 of your friends on board, is not a winning move.