Italian ocean racing legend Giovanni Soldini – the man who rescued Isabelle Autissier from her capsized yacht in the Around Alone in 1999, and still went on to win the singlehanded race – is in charge of the first ever attempt to convert a Multi One Design (MOD70) into a trans-oceanic foiling multihull.

Team Maserati took ownership of the former Gitana MOD70 at the end of 2015 and began alterations immediately adding a T-foil rudder and an L-foil daggerboard in place of the MOD70 C-foil on one of the hulls, leaving the other side unchanged in order to compare performance on opposite tacks. They also fitted a brand new set of wings to the central daggerboard in order to fly the boat on three points: rudder, lateral foil and the adjustable central ‘Manta’ foil that sits in the slot just forward of the mast in the central hull.

Take a look at the video interview below, filmed at La Spezia in early November, prior to the team’s departure for Las Palmas de Gran Canaria for the start of the RORC transatlantic.