Bella PITA

LOA: 23.0 m (75.0’)
Beam: 5.0 m (16.4’)
Draft: Lifting Keel
Concept: Tripp Design
Interior: Owner / Maxi Dolphin
Builder: Maxi Dolphin
Hull: Carbon on Foam
Launch: 2009

As designers, we are always looking to strike the most perfect balance between sailing power and comfort in order to suit a particular client. Bella PITA's owner grew up sailing and is an ocean racer of long-standing. This design was concieved to fit the owner's desire for a state-of-the-art yacht that can make ocean passages, and perform in ocean and café racing. The result could be called a racing "yacht", that is, a boat with the fastest and most balanced hull form for real speed in racing, true independence for ocean crossings, and a very high quality, comfortable finish for live-aboard sailing.

While grand-prix racing boats lack comfort in order to attain the highest speeds, our objective here was to have the boat's high level of comfort balanced by being borne in a long and svelt 75' shell. The DLR (displacement length ratio) number of this boat is a very fast 72. A grand-prix STP 65 has a DLR of 62, with neither amenities nor ocean crossing capabilities. The IRC handicap wins back most of this weight disadvantage, and the advantages for crossings and living aboard speak for themselves.

There has been an evolution spiraling upward from the smaller boats into the bigger yachts. By combining balanced hull forms, composites, lifting keels, and the use of water as ballast, wider design avenues are created for racing boats, for blue water boats, and for people who love sailing great, fast boats. Boat speed was of-the-essence for Bella PITA, so our research in the aero and hydrodynamic domains developed a final sail plan representing a workable balance between pure speed and offshore handling. The hull and appendages were optimized through the use of a new, free-surface panel code method. Power is delivered through the use of a deep lifting keel complimented by 1250 liters of seawater ballast.

The layout consists of a generous owner’s cabin forward and two guest cabins aft. A sea kindly galley and salon occupy the middle to the boat -- the ends having been kept empty. The superstructure and deck layout are both practical for racing and comfortable for sailing. Hydraulic sail controls harness this 75’s power easily so that she can be sailed in various modes – cruising, short handed passage making, and fully crewed racing.

Construction of this carbon jewel was entrusted to Maxi Dolphin of Italy, and now that Bella PITA has completed sea trials in the Med, she is enroute to the Caribbean. The plan is to race this first year in three seas – the Caribbean, the Mediteranean, the Tasman, as well as both sides of the Atlantic.