Ferrari Hypersail unveiled in Milan (and it’s not red)

Has there been a more ambitious project than Ferrari Hypersail? Quite possibly, because even I wasn’t around long enough ago to witness the launch of those magnificent J-Class yachts of their day. But that was then and this is now, and I was fortunate enough to be in Milan on Tuesday for the unveiling of the colours of this 30-metre leviathan, which is due for launch towards the end of this year.

Of, course, being a motor racing noob and not knowing my Ferrari from my elbow, I thought the boat was going to be red. Like, obvs! But as Luca Rizzotti, founder of Foiling Week and the Foiling Awards, pointed out to me, yellow and black are the two other Ferrari colours. I had an al fresco lunch with Luca - who lives round the corner from the Ferrari offices in central Milan - and he correctly predicted the colour scheme which was indeed yellow and black - with no trace of red to be found.

Honestly, I was much more interested in the technicals of the boat, and enjoyed some good conversations with Marco Rigibini, team leader at Ferrari Hypersail, French super-designer Guillaume Verdier, and that Aussie bloke who gets absolutely everywhere in grand prix yachting - Glenn Ashby. However, getting Ferrari Hypersail to this point has involved a cast of hundreds, and everyone on this project is at pains to point out that this is a massive team effort; no one wants to take individual credit for anything on Ferrari Hypersail - and they’re probably right to do so.

This is a sky’s-the-limit, no-holds-barred project to create the fastest offshore boat the world has ever seen. Honestly though, could a monohull ever hope to be faster around the planet than the multihulls which have dominated the Jules Verne Trophy since its inception? Well, quite possibly yes, according to both Ashby and Verdier. It’s Verdier and his team, by the way, who have also been working hard on Gitana 18, the latest Ultim which launched just a few weeks ago. So he probably has a very good sense of their relative performance potential, although he’s far too diplomatic to draw any direct comparisons.

The only self-imposed design rule that the Ferrari Hypersail project has imposed on itself is that all forms of power must be generated from renewable sources: the wind (of course!), a huge array of solar panels on the foredeck and the prospect of harnessing kinetic energy (similar to the way that perpetual motion wrist watches work), hydro-electric power and even wind power to put back into the battery system. While Ferrari isn’t making big play of any environmental credentials for the boat, this project could set new standards for being truly self-sufficient and being much less reliant on artificial sources of battery power such as we’ve seen crop up across the sport in recent years.

There are so many exciting aspects to this project but more than anything else, this boat has the potential to be the fastest on the planet. Will we ever see Ferrari Hypersail go head-to-head with any of the Ultim trimarans? Probably not. But it’s great to see a project of this scale and ambition, and one to challenge the French dominance of outlandish, ground-breaking offshore projects.