Tag: wallycento
The Mills Design wallycento Tango was first to finish the 2018 edition of the Rolex Giraglia, leading home her sister wallycentos Galateia and Magic Carpet. This result gave her victory in the combined inshore and offshore parts of the Rolex Giraglia event, starting with inshore racing in St. Tropez, and finishing with the historic offshore race to Genoa. The Tango team led by Marc Pajot are rapidly coming to terms with the new and highly sophisticated 100 footer, having bested their more experienced wallycento rivals in both of the Wally events so far in the 2018 calendar.
An extensive R&D program was undertaken for WallyCento#4 with our R&D Partners KND/Sailing Performance, including hull and appendage CFD studies in both panel code overseen by partner Roland Kleiter, and RANS headed by Dimitri Nicolopoulos which included appended modelling in waves. These programs build on their experience developing the 2014 Maxi72 World Champion Alegre, foiling IMOCA 60’s, and the Volvo 65 VPP.
A key component of the process is targeting the design to a carefully defined weather and course model reflecting Wally Class events in the Mediterranean, using a decade of historic weather data both from logged event data and data recorded by weather services adjacent to sailing venues. The final hull shape exhibits a combination of low drag in lighter conditions and increased stability in more wind that makes her more versatile than previous generations. The single rudder chosen reflects this optimisation to the condition set which includes a mix of windward/leeward as well as coastal courses.
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.