Yachting: Micros set to stir up Classic race

Sailor Neville Crichton is competing in the Coastal Classic. Photo / Richard Robinson

The 2009 Coastal Classic was a year of many firsts.

The eye-catching performance was that of Neville Crichton's super maxi Alfa Romeo, which blitzed the race record by nearly 40 minutes, becoming the first boat to complete the race in under seven hours.

But if you were to look further down the fleet, there were several boats that didn't grab the headlines but produced impressive performances.

In particular, three small boats finished the 119 nautical mile race in times that astounded the sailing world.

Overload - a hard chined 9.1m Elliott design owned by Scott Randall - finished in 10 hours and 53 minutes, wiping more than an hour of the under 30ft record, also beating the record set by 40 footers. Not far behind were the Shaw 9ms Karma Police and Deep Throttle, which reached Russell Wharf just 10 minutes later.

As a result, much interest surrounds how the emerging fleet of "micros" will perform in the 2010 edition of the race.

The "micros" are circa 30-footers that give exceptional performance in downwind and reaching conditions.

Three of these boats are from the drawing board of Auckland designer Rob Shaw.

Deep Throttle, and Shaw's own boat Karma Police, share identical hull, rig and sails. Both can get up to boatspeeds in the mid-20 knot range, and can equal or better boats 10 to 20 feet bigger than them.

This year they are joined by a brand new rival which is bigger, but may well not turn out to be better.

Volvo Ocean Race winner and former Rolex world sailor of the year, Mike Sanderson, has teamed up to launch another Rob Shaw design, the flush-decked 10m Orbit.

The handicapper for the Coastal Classic has rated Orbit as being slower than its little sisters, and given Sanderson's boat was launched just days ago, it will be an unknown quantity right to the very end. Orbit will be crewed by Sanderson, Chris Salthouse, Brad Jackson and Phil Jamieson.

Sanderson believes his biggest challenge will be keeping the boat in one piece.

"In the moderate stuff we should be able to get it [against Karma Police, Deep Throttle and Overload], but if it's too breezy they'll be too sorted," Sanderson said, explaining the effect the late launch date could have on his race.

"The new 10 metre Orbit will be a bit of an unknown quantity going into the race with none of us having had a chance to line up against them prior to the start," said Shaw.

All four boats will compete in division one, against the mighty entrants including the Evolution Sails Limit, which is nearly twice their size, and the 50 footers, Wired and Ran Tan II.

All eyes will be on the jostling for position at the front of the fleet but the battle of the micros is shaping up to be intriguing.