Maximus Drops from the Sydney to Hobart Race

Reprinted with permission from ACP Media (Trade-A-Boat).
Article by Rob Kothe (written 18 Dec 2007), photos by David Salter

New Zealand's super maxi Maximus, one of the favourites for line honours in this year's Sydney to Hobart yacht race, has pulled out with a badly damaged keel.

Yesterday morning when the boat was sailing from Auckland the crew called a PAN PAN, after a diver had gone overboard and found the complex keel mechanism had been damaged. This morning the 30-metre maxi arrived in Sydney just after 4am escorted by a Trans Tasman freighter and a Sydney Water Police vessel.

This afternoon she was lifted up at Woolwich Dock and an examination by Buckley revealed that the damage to the keel could not be repaired in time for the Boxing Day start.

It was an expert opinion. When she was launched in 2005 Buckley explained his company Buckley Engineering had provided the engineering and built the canting keel. He said they had focused on doing a better job on the mechanics and back-up systems than other maxis (e.g. Skandia, which lost its keel and turned turtle in the 2004 Hobart race).

The mechanism is unique; the keel's nearly 6 metre draft provides great leverage, but a little too deep for most sailing docks, so Buckley Engineering designed a two part keel with the top of the keel hollow so the lower strut could hydraulically retract inside it.

As the pictures show the thin walled section had broken completely away in yesterday's incident.

During her refit and modifications in Auckland some changes were made to the keel by way of refinements to the canting mechanism, and the way in which the keel connects to the hull. The top of the keel was sealed off so that the wetbox was no longer filling with 600kg of water and just accepted small leakage from the keel hull joint. Some changes were made to the lifting mechanism to put it lower in the keel, which was made deeper, but some weight was also removed.

Maximus was forced out of last year's race with mast damage, but Buckley said he hoped to bring Maximus back for another crack at the event next year.

Perhaps an unfortunate choice of words and as one dockside observer commented 'the keel buckled and they are out of the Hobart race.'

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