The Yacht Club Costa Smeralda is one of the most prestigious yacht clubs in the world, its marble atrium and exclusive pool deck usually welcoming owners and crews of superyachts, Swans, and iconic classes like the Star, J-Class and TP52. But this autumn the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, the club’s season finale, broke new ground with three catamarans given pride of place at the YCCS’s race dock.

The three different, but equally exciting, powerful big cats went on the prowl in a newly introduced multihull division within the 45-strong entry at the showcase Maxi event. Lord Irvine Laidlaw’s brand new Gunboat 80 Highland Fling 18 lined up alongside Adrian Keller’s 84ft Irens-designed Allegra (launched 2014), and the new Gunboat 68 Convexity, campaigned by Don Wilson and Suna Said. For the record, Allegra won overall by two points from Highland Fling which missed the second, windy race due to a ‘teething gremlin’, but then won races three and four when the breeze had diminished. Convexity finished 3rd, on equal points aggregate to Highland Fling.

Highland Fling 18 is Laidlaw’s first new build multihull, after he had an interim pre-owned ‘starter’ Gunboat 68 (hull No1) in 2021-2022 while the 80 was in build. The red-hulled beast is undoubtedly the benchmark for a growing breed of Maxi Multihulls which are now starting to become more popular in Europe as well as in the Caribbean and the USA.