Maximized Maxis

These are happy days at the top of the sport, where owners of sailing big hardware are now playing by their own terms.

Maxi racing in the Med is hot. Call it a lesson in the value of getting your act together. The game has grown and changed dramatically and deliberately with fleets of 50 as the new normal. Ten years ago, none of this was ensured. The secretary general of the International Maxi Association, Andrew Mclrvine, tells us, "Rapid change was needed, or it was going to just die."

How it didn't "just die" is a story worth telling, and we lean on McIrvine for that. "The International Maxi Association was originally a social club for the owners of 80-footers. That generation was going out as I was invited in," he says. "The racing had categories that were impossible to define, so people were always gaming it. What's a racer-cruiser versus a cruiser-racer? And could we ever have effective class splits based on hull length?" 

The answer to that, as proven, is no he says. "The categories are now performance-defined, using a single-number IRC rule that includes an accurate weight measurement, not a calculated weight. We photograph the interiors so we know who's stripping them out. The database includes 155 boats, and it has checks on people who fly too close to the rules. That gives other people the confidence to come out and race."

The 2023 Mediterranean Maxi Offshore Challenge offers a series of six events, wrapping up in August with the Palermo-Montecarlo Race. That's 500 miles from Sicily to the Champagne at Yacht Club de Monaco-not to forget the fly-through gate at Porto Cervo along the way and the option of leaving Corsica to port or to starboard. It’s a sporty race in a sporty calendar.