Once upon a time, racing yachts made of wood, fibreglass or Kevlar would, after a few seasons of hard use and abuse, start to lose their stiffness thereby causing diminished rig tension and other performance impacting horrors. However the advent of ultra stiff carbon fibre, epoxy and space age core materials used in modern day race boat construction have largely eliminated this, but this leaves well-built and conceived carbon fibre one designs in the odd position of effectively never needing to be replaced. 

The RC44 is a fine example of this: the majority of the present fleet was built more than 15 years ago with the likes of Vladimir Prosikhin’s Team Nika (hull #10) and Igor Lah’s Team Ceeref Vaider (hull #11) dating back to the dawn of the class in 2007. That these boats currently lie first and third in the 2024 44Cup season ranking is testament to the quality of the RC44’s design, engineering and construction, the latter undertaken by Pauger Carbon Composites in Hungary. 

With the slow ‘churn’ of RC44s – Christian Zuerrer’s Black Star Sailing Team (hull #27) was the last new RC44 to be launched back in 2022, while Torbjörn Törnqvist’s Artemis Racing (hull #26) was launched in 2014 – owners Chris Bake, John Bassadone and Torbjörn Törnqvist have gathered together to invest in the class with building of two brand new RC44s. Both as usual have been built by Pauger, still very much adhering to the class’ strict one design rules. The two new boats –Team Aqua (hull #28) and Peninsula Racing (hull #29) - are now launched and, this week, will be out on the race track for the first time here in Brunnen, Switzerland for the 44Cup’s 2024 World Championship.

“Chris [Bake], Torbjörn [Törnqvist] and myself, ordered two boats with a view of trying to expand the fleet,” explains Peninsula Racing’s John Bassadone. “The fleet is in a very good position, but there are no boats available. So we took that initiative and said ‘let’s build these boats’ and so now there are a couple of boats available, that are well set up and ready to go, in order to get two new teams into the class.” Team Aqua (hull #25) was the World Championship winning machine in 2019 and 2021, as well as being the season’s winner in 2021. Peninsula Racing (hull #22) currently lies sixth in the 2024 44Cup having been runner-up in Marstand last year and was the World Champion winning machine in 2012. 

How having a new boat affects the performance of Team Aqua and Peninsula Racing will be interesting to follow this season and next, but neither team is expecting it to fast track them to the front of the fleet. As Bassadone says: “If we are improving it is not because of having a new boat, but because of the hard work that’s been put in and continues to be put in. We just need to perform better and cut out the mistakes: it doesn’t matter if you have a new boat or not, if you make a mistake you’ll be spat out of the back in this class…”

Both teams have paid tribute to their shore teams and others for working long and hours over recent days and weeks in order to get the new RC44s race ready for the World Championship. 

Team Aqua tactician Cameron Appleton praised the belief of the trio owners in the class in “bringing in a couple of new teams behind us by providing easy access to #25 and #22. It is gaining traction and it will be quite remarkable to build the fleet back up. We are targeting 12 [boats] with the possibility of getting to 13, which will be a nice number of boats racing around.” 

Peninsula Racing tactician Vasco Vascotto added: “The guys made a huge effort to put our new boat in the water. It is not perfect, but it is something very exciting for the future - to have boats on the market to make this class even bigger. Thanks to John and all of the guys who have decided to invest in this class. We recognise that, especially to start with, having a new boat is not an advantage, but we’ll do our best.” 

For amateur owners looking at a relatively cost effective means of experiencing keelboat racing and teamwork at the very highest level – in a high performance one design that can be raced meaningfully in as little as five knots and as much as 25 – now is the chance to get involved, with two fully tweaked, turnkey RC44s ready to race tomorrow.