Few pairings have been more successful in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race’s history than that of the skipper Mark Richards and Palm Beach XI, which was formerly called Wild Oats XI. Richards has skippered the 100-footer since its original owner, Robert Oatley, launched it in 2005.
The team has won line honors for being the first finisher a record-setting nine times, including the 2005 and 2012 races when it also won the Tattersall Cup, the race’s top handicap trophy (think golf), and set new course records.
While the boat has a long history of undergoing performance-optimizing modifications, Palm Beach Motor Yachts, which Richards founded, bought the yacht in 2025 and commissioned a refit. Their goal? To make the aging supermaxi, which last competed in 2022, competitive against newer boats.
This interview was conducted before the team sailed the modified boat and has been edited and condensed.
How much different will Palm Beach XI be this year compared with 2005?
It’s going to be extremely different to the 2005 version, but it’s also going to be extremely different than in 2022 — like radically different since the last time she did the race. That’s the exciting part of the whole project.
How much of the boat will be original at the start of this year’s race?
Not a lot. The rudder’s still original, and there’ll be probably 55 feet of original hull.
What has it been like to skipper a boat that’s evolved so much over time?
I mean, that’s our DNA, it’s my DNA, Bob Oatley’s DNA, the family, all of us, the whole team. We’re all from America’s Cup backgrounds. We’re all very evolutionary people, and we all love technology. That’s why we’re doing this.
I obviously have a big attachment to the boat. I still believe there’s something magical in her.
I think these recent modifications are going to have the biggest impact by a long, long way of what we’ve done in the past for performance. It could put this boat into the leading edge of ocean-racing speed again.
How much do you think these modifications will improve the boat’s performance?
We’ve done a lot of modifications this time: new upwind daggerboards to improve her upwind performance, which we’re thinking will make a significant difference in all conditions, and the bonuses are actually strengthening our light-air capabilities.
The new keel and bulb should reduce drag, maximize our righting moment [the measurement of a sailboat’s resistance to tipping, or heeling] and create lift [the vertical forces on the boat’s foils]. That will be a significant change in all conditions for us. We’re probably talking 2 or 3 percent here.
But our biggest weakness, obviously against Comanche and the newer boats like LawConnect, was reaching. We were very weak at reaching. [Or sailing roughly perpendicular to the wind.]
But the new C-foils are going to dramatically improve our performance. We’re talking quite large numbers in certain reaching and running conditions. So that’s really exciting.
Will these upgrades make the boat competitive against newer designs?
I think the boat should be very competitive. I mean, the reason we’ve done all these modifications is the belief that we can be one of the fastest boats in the world again and much more of an all-rounder.
Is it risky, less than three weeks after finishing the work, to bring a modified supermaxi onto a course with a history of sinking boats?
Not really. I mean, it’s boatbuilding, right? And these days, the technology and engineering capabilities are so advanced that it should all be good. There’ll be a lot of testing done, and we’ll be going to sea knowing that the boat’s 100 percent safe.
What about from a racing perspective. Is this enough time to teethe the boat?
We’re an extremely experienced team. We’re all boatbuilders, we’ve all been doing this for a long time, so there’s a lot of experience and depth onboard.
What does it take to win line honors and the Tattersall Cup as skipper so many times?
There are two major factors. I often say you need money and passion.
Fortunately, in the past, Robert Oatley and the Oatley family have owned the boat. Bob was very passionate and had plenty of money, so that’s one thing.
And now, we’ve got plenty of passion in it — myself and our shareholders, and our team. And we’ve got some money as well.
Is there anything else about this project that you’d like to add?
From a safety perspective, we’ve been very stringent on making sure that our engineers know that we want the appropriate safety factors, and that we don’t want equipment or structural failures. That’s been a really big part of the whole brief of the program.
If it works, it’s going to be something that the whole world will be talking about.
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