Wild Thing

[Mercator]

Hi all,

Being new to this forum and it being for "cruisers" I am not sure if anyone is interested in Ocean Racing.

However for anyone interested I have uploaded a few pics that I took from a friends Beneteau of Skandia - Wild Thing on her first trial sail.

Wild Thing (Skandia for the major sponsor) is a new and somewhat radical 100 ft maxi ocean racer, owned and skippered by a friend of mine, Grant Warrington.

She is huge on the water and was even bigger when I saw it being built in Mal Harts factory in Mornington.

Apart from the carbon fibre construction she has a fairly radical canting keel that can be seen from an aerial pic on their web site.

So far Grant has won I think all the qualifiying races and is odds on favourite to take line honours for the famous Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

Their web site is
http://www.wildthingyachting.com.au

[BC Mike]

I think I heard somewhere that they are not going to allow some of the maxis in this years race which will really peeve the daddy big bucks group. BC Mike C

[Mercator]

The maximum overall length for the Sydney-Hobart is 30 metres (aprox 100 ft) which I think is big enough to satisfy most of the Big Boys and their toys !

There is also an entry from New Zealand, another super maxi yacht at 98ft called Zana.

I am sure that this will keep alive the traditional rivalry between Aus and NZ and make for an interesting race for line honours.

[Troubledour]

Dunno if anybody else is having a problem with it, but that site's not coming up for me. Google got me search results but more of the same ... "The page cannot be displayed".

Troubledour

[Mercator]

Yep - don't know why his site is down !

If you want to see the aerial pic of the keel it is also on the the builders site at http://www.hartmarine.com.au/skandia.htm

[troppoboat]

My wife an I were in Sydney last week and were lucky enough to see a few of the S2H maxies training in the habour they are awesome one passed us while we were in a ferry doing 15+Kn in not too much breeze. Even as cruisers you have to have respect for these amazing ( and expensive ) craft and crews. Shane

[BC Mike]

I would be happy with the 35 foot boat that won the race that had the great storm. BC Mike C

[lolanreg@smartc]

She still leans over, just imagine trying to get a cuppa on that!

[David M]

Originally Posted by Troubledour

Dunno if anybody else is having a problem with it, but that site's not coming up for me. Google got me search results but more of the same ... "The page cannot be displayed".

Troubledour

It worked for me using Firefox.

That's a heck of a boat.

[Ex-Calif]

I sure hope Troubledour isn't still waiting for an answer since December 2003...

[Weyalan]

FWIW, Wild thing (the 98' Supermaxi) is on the market. Although an amazing boat, she was always a little bit of a compromise... her owner probably didn't have quite the spending power of "Croaky" Crichton (Alfa Romeo) and Bob Oately (Wild Oates), so Wild thing was always a little bit in their shadow. Now the new generation of Supermaxis are coming out (Speedboat, Leopard, etc) and some super-competitive pocket maxis, that although they won't beat the Supers across teh line, will give them curry on corrected IRC time (Moneypenny, Posebud, Numbers et. al.) so Wild Thing just isn't on the pace any more.

Sadly, she will probably end up at "raceboat graveyard" (Airlie Beach or Hamilton Island), taking toursts around the bay, like so many sad illustrious boats of former years (Condor, Ragamuffin, etc)