It may be one of the leading events on the yacht racing calendar, but when it opens on Monday 3 June, the 12th edition of the Loro Piana Superyacht Regatta, will do so without its name sake’s boat in attendance.
This year the Loro Piana Superyacht Regatta. will, be bereft of My Song, the 40 metre Baltic 130′.
Pier Luigi Loro Piana
Owned by Yacht Club Costa Smerelda member Pier Luigi Loro Piana, My Song was lost at sea. While the accident is under investigation, the YCCS and the entire yacht racing community have expressed their solidarity with the owner and the team for the loss of a boat that had already gone down in the history of yachting.
The yachts’ billionaire owner was said to be stunned stunned by loss of his superyacht after learning that it had fallen off the deck of a cargo ship during transportation in the Mediterranean.
“For anyone who loves the sea, his boat is like a second home, and it is as if my home has burnt down,” Piana, 67, told la Repubblica. He added, “We had decided to transport it on a cargo ship to be sure if wasn’t damaged because you can never be sure of the weather.”
Last December My Song set a speed record in the RORC Transatlantic Race, completing the 3,000 mile race between Lanzarote and Grenada in an elapsed time of 10 days 5 hrs 47 mins 11 secs, shaving 1hr 19mins 48 secs off the previous monohull record.
Valued at £30 million
Built by Baltic Yachts in Finland and launched in 2016, reports have put the superyacht’s value at £30 million.
Peters & May, the experienced logistics company in charge of transporting the yacht, confirmed an investigation was under way to determine how the incident happened.
David Holley, chief executive of Peters & May, said in a statement: “The primary assessment is that the yacht’s cradle (owned and provided by the yacht, warrantied by the yacht for sea transport and assembled by the yacht’s crew) collapsed during the voyage from Palma to Genoa and subsequently resulted in the loss of My Song overboard.”
Racing and social events will continue
Racing and social events will never the less continue through Saturday 8 June at the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda in Puerto Cervo, Sardinia.
The regatta is hosted by the yacht’s owner whose worth was estimated at US$1.6bn in 2018, according to Forbes magazine.
Now, just twenty superyachts ranging from 24 to approximately 52 metres will be lined up on the quays, including eight yachts from the Southern Wind Shipyard competing for their dedicated trophy, the Southern Wind Rendezvous and Trophy.
The longest yacht, at 51 metres and 70 cm, is Q– an Ed Dubois design built by Alloy Yachts in 2008. The most recently launched yacht is the Southern Wind 105 feet Kiboko Tres, which took to the water in October 2018 and is making her regatta debut.
The yacht with the longest history, meanwhile, is a new entry to the LPSYR: Mariette of 1915 is a 39-metre gaff rigged schooner launched in that year from the slipway of the Herreshoff shipyard in Bristol, Rhode Island, on the East Coast of the United States.
Classics
Although Mariette is the only truly classic yacht competing, Meteor makes a return to the waters of the Costa Smeralda with a new owner. This schooner with classic lines was built in Holland in 2007 to a design by Dykstra Naval Architects. Dykstra was also responsible for the project to rebuild the J Class Rainbow on the same lines of the original 1934 version which was commissioned by Harold Vanderbilt to defend the America’s Cup. The first week of June will therefore see a fleet gathered in Porto Cervo that recounts the story and the evolution of the yachting on a grand scale from the early 1900s to today.
New for this edition is the fact that the event will last an extra day, with a rest day scheduled for 6 June allowing for any racing cancelled due to weather conditions to be recovered. The schedule for the Southern Wind fleet instead sees daily coastal races, without any days off. The entire fleet, divided into Superyachts-Cruising and Superyacht-Performance categories, will compete using the staggered start formula: individual starts on the first day of racing, while from the second day only the Superyacht-Cruising category will have a staggered start and the Superyacht-Performance category will have a fleet start.
Social programme ashore
In superyacht events, the social programme ashore is also of great importance: in addition to the exclusive dinner for owners scheduled for 5 June at the YCCS, and the traditional after-race drinks held daily for crews, on 7th of June a Sunset Party will be organised on Quay A of the marina, while the next morning – 8 June – marks World Oceans Day and will see the “YCCS clean beach day” take place with the support of the One Ocean Foundation, the platform for the protection of the sea created by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda on the occasion of its 50th Anniversary.