This is Kokomo, a 192ft (58m), Dubois designed sloop just launched by Alloy Yachts in Auckland New Zealand. She is the largest sailing yacht ever built in New Zealand and with her enormous lift keel and Southern Spars mast, which towers to more than 220ft she is described by her designers as representing ‘the most significant advance for a vessel of her type’.

Kokomo will certainly be one of the most powerful single-masted superyachts on the circuit and is the first of a number of so-called super-sloops to be launched over the next couple of years.

The next yacht to hit the water will be a 66m/216ft sloop, also designed by Dubois, which will be completed by Vitters in Holland for a 2011 launch (see Yachting World, January 2010 and February 2010, out next month)