Mills Design is excited to have been chosen to design Tango, the next high performance Wally.  When asked by the client for the most refined high performance solution to Wally’s 100′ Racer-Cruiser WallyCento rule we assembled a team of specialists with the most open minds to review the options and create something special.   Our core design partnership comprises R&D specialist Dimitri Nicolopoulos from KND/Sailing Performance in Valencia (also providing design management), Giovanni Belgrano of Pure Engineering overseeing the engineering, and Gautier Sergeant lead designer with North Sails.  We sat down in late 2014 with a clean sheet of paper to combine the comfort and style demanded by Wally with the performance and refinement expected by all of the team, and the result is WallyCento#4.

Tango is currently under construction at the Persico Marine yard in Italy.  “We suggested Mark to the client because I was impressed by the performance of the Maxi72 Alegre.” says  Wally founder Luca Bassani. “Since the first meetings, we shared with him the same visions of the innovations that can be applied to this type of yachts like the cutting-edge deck layout that combines our flush-deck with bulwark introduced in 2006 with Esense, with the ramp deck of Alegre, perfectly reflecting the Wally DNA of improved functionality.”

Significant progress has been made in a number of areas of design and engineering, one of the first targets was optimisation of the accomodation and structure to reduce structural weight, improve hull stiffness, and centralise the significant machinery weights to reduce pitching inertias.   Key to this process has been the involvement of the Project Manager Carlo Torre of MYT in Monaco and the Persico team, who have been creative and flexible throughout the extensive development process, assessing numerous alternatives before a final layout was agreed.  As part of this the extensive systems necessary for these boats have been incorporated from the outset instead of being added at a later point, to ensure the most refined layout and structure.

Deck development is another significant thread, combining the simple sleek aesthetic that Wally has pioneered with a more functional race-able layout encouraging quicker easier manoeuvres.  Drawing on the ramp deck first seen on Alegre this geometry was developed firstly to fit over the interior accommodation mandated by the wallycento rule in the most efficient way possible.  The combination of sloping deck fore and aft with the raised central cockpit floor not only achieves this but provides an easier deck on which to operate.  The key crew roles are concentrated centrally between the wheels and the pit winches, promoting communication and allowing the largest number of winch combinations to come into play.

The complexity of a WallyCento requires many specialists functioning together to achieve an optimised outcome, construction is well underway and we look forward to the launch of Tango in spring 2017 as another example of the strength of team solutions in a project of this scale and scope.