21 days, 19 hours, 32 minutes and 54 seconds: that was the time it took Maserati Sailboat to cover the Tea Clipper Trade Route, plied between San Francisco and Shanghai in the mid-1800s by the most audacious and modern clippers of the day.
An excellent new time reference which Soldini and Maserati will ask the World Sailing Speed Record Council, the international body that certifies the best times of modern craft on the historic clipper routes, to ratify.
Maserati sailed across the finish-line at Shanghai (China) on the 31st of May at 9:25:44 pm GMT (11:25:44 pm Italian time, 5:25:44 of the 1st of June local time).
She cast off from San Francisco (United States) at 1:52:50 GMT (3:52:50 Italian time) on the night of May 10 and then sprinted 7392 real nautical miles (great circle distance: 5334 nautical miles) at an average speed of 14,1 knots.
Giovanni Soldini was flanked aboard by an international crew of eight: Italians Guido Broggi, Andrea Fantini, Francesco Malingri and Marco Spertini; German Boris Herrmann; Chinese sailor Jianghe “Tiger” Teng; Spaniard Oliver Herrera Perez; and Swede Andreas Axelsson.
“We are satisfied,” declared Soldini just after crossing the line. “As always, Maserati proved what an excellent craft she is and the crew made an efficient and very tightknitteam. Twenty-one days from San Francisco to Shanghai is a very impressive time. We will be requesting that the World Sailing Speed Record certify it. Conditions were good almost the entire way. The first part of the route wasvery fast: six days to Hawaii is an impressive pace. Then we had a good oldgallop through the Trade Winds. The final section, as we neared China, was the trickiest as winds were very light, but we were expecting that. We hope that these 7,000 miles will quickly become a classic record, like the New York-San Francisco.”
The VOR70 Maserati’s next event is in Australia where, in late December, she’ll take part in the Rolex Sydney – Hobart Yacht Race, one of the world’s most famous and challenging sailing events.
