Rebirth of the 100 footers

A new chapter in the 100ft maxi story began this year with the launch of the first WallyCento, Charles Dunstone’s Hamilton. A second of the new breed, Sir Lindsay Owen Jones’ new Magic Carpet, is currently in build at Wally’s facility in Ancona due for launch in March in time for PalmaVela in April. Hamilton was built by Green Marine in Hythe to a design by Judel-Vrolijk in accordance with both the ‘Wally rule’ and also the ‘WallyCento’ rule. The former details the philosophy of Wally, while the latter is a box rule defining the shape of the WallyCento itself – such as 30-30.48m LOA, 6.5-7.2m beam, a bow overhang of 0.2m, a lifting keel of 6.2m max draft, weight of 45-50 tonnes and of course the principle rig dimensions. Read more about this here... Generally the idea is to end up with a boat that is not dissimilar in concept to Mike Slade’s newly refitted ICAP Leopard – essentially a luxury ‘designer’ yacht with all modcons that can be used for cruising, but which is otherwise a pure race boat. In displacement terms this means the new Hamilton is lighter than a typical Wally 100 such as Indio, which weighs 59 tonnes, but around twice the displacement of the spindly Reichel Pugh 100 pure racers like Wild Oats XI or Esimit Europa 2. Owner Charles Dunstone is no stranger to the maxi class. While there is a larger 117ft Hamilton superyacht, he previously campaigned the 77ft Nokia Enigma. This he sold after a successful season in 2003 when he won both the Rolex Fastnet Race and the Middle Sea Race. However inshore racing is what Dunstone prefers and prior to the arrival of his new boat he campaigned his IRCed TP52s Rio. James Stagg, who project managed the build along with Richard