“With Pyewacket 70, you buy it, put the mast up and go racing.”

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com 8 Dec 14:51 NZDT

"There’s one thing I'll say about the boat, to anybody who is looking to buy a previously owned boat - this Pyewacket 70 in perfect condition. You wouldn't know it wasn't a brand-new boat.”

High praise from co-skipper Ben Mitchell, reflecting on a great six years of racing on Pyewacket 70, and after completing the latest chapter in his 50yr plus offshore racing career.

Under owner Roy P Disney, the turbo-ed Volvo 70 has raced the classic ocean races, on the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas.

“It's not a boat that a new owner is going to have to spend a lot of money to upgrade. Just the opposite - put the boat in the water, sail it, and race it. You're ready to go, “ Mitchell adds.

Ben Mitchell's early offshore racing began while he was still at college, crewing on the legendary 73ft Kialoas II and III, before moving to the 73ft super-light Windward Passage, which began breaking race records soon after her launch in 1969.

He also had the early distinction of sailing in the 1975 Sydney Hobart on Kialoa III, setting a new race record.

Co-incidental to Mitchell's over 50 years of offshore racing, to date, Pyewacket 70 and Kialoa III both competed in the 2025 Rolex Fastnet Race.

Since the Disney family entered offshore racing, Mitchell has been involved in several of their Pyewackets. "I think my first race was 1989, and it's been non-stop ever since. The lion's share of my offshore sailing in the last 30-35 years has all been on a Pyewacket."

Most recently, that has been on Roy P Disney's Pyewacket 70, a Volvo 70, which is now on the market following the 2025 Rolex Fastnet Race, and attracting strong interest.

"I sailed on about six or seven different Pyewackets - they were all very similar, except for the Volvo 70, of course, which really stepped out of the box," Mitchell explains.

Off to a fast start

The Juan K Volvo 70 started life as the Spanish entry Telefónica in the 2011/12 Volvo Ocean Race, winning the first three ocean legs. "I sailed aboard from when Roy bought it - right before Covid in 2019-20, and I just competed in the 2025 Rolex Fastnet Race and stayed with her right up to when she went back into the shed, in Gosport [England].

"Typically, I get delegated to being the skipper of the boat, and then if Roy is going to be there, it's usually Gary Weiseman and me, who are the two watch captains.

“Gary doesn't do much of the offshore sailing on the Volvo 70 anymore. We have had three key guys from New Zealand who are phenomenal sailors - Brad Jackson, Tony Mutter, and Daryl Wislang. They had extensive experience with Volvo 70s and were the ones who really knew them and their sailing style. They were the primary guys on Pyewacket."

Over the period of three Volvo Ocean Races, seven VO70s were designed by Juan Kouyoumdjian of Juan Yacht Design. Five are still racing, and, as a type, the VO70s remain consistent performers. They can hang onto supermaxi 100fters and stay ahead of the 50fters, giving them a good shot at the overall trophy. In all the major offshore races, Volvo 70s have set race records and won division and overall honours.

After finishing fourth in the 2012 Volvo Ocean Race, Telefónica was purchased by Australian owners, renamed as BlackJack, and modified to be more competitive in all conditions in shorter offshore races, while not giving away any of the Volvo 70's superlative downwind and reaching performance.

"Essentially, they went up three and a half meters on the mast, and out a meter and a half on the boom, and another meter and a half on the sprit. Then they dropped the keel down. I think a standard Volvo draws about 15 feet, and we draw 19ft. And with the deeper fin, the bulb is a bit lighter than a stock Volvo. The overall weight of the boat is a little bit less, just because of the deeper fin. We can get away with a smaller bulb and still have the same stability, basically as a stock Volvo," Mitchell explains.

"Basically, the boat does pretty well on all points of sail - right up to her handicap time."

"We didn't focus on getting the rating down quite as well as we should or could have, because the boat was in California, and in the first few races we sailed, we were chasing line honours and not worrying about handicaps.

"Pyewacket 70 really excels once it's freed up and once the wind gets to the beam or after of the beam, it's really a special boat then, especially on handicap."

Potential rating reduction

“If somebody was concerned that the boat's rating was a little too high, there are a few things that can be done. If Roy was going to keep the boat, we definitely had changes planned and ready to proceed. But once the boat decided to go up for sale, there was no point in building a couple of new sails just for one or two races, so we just elected to sail it in the configuration that we'd had it."

"The issue was the size of some of the sails. The next step is to go to an IRC-style sail plan and significantly reduce the handicap, with only a small degradation in performance. Most of our sails were maximum-size under ORR and ORC, so there were definitely some big gains to be had in sail plan optimisation for IRC.”

“In the Fastnet, we ended up just using our more ORC/ORR sail plan, which got penalised pretty heavily in IRC."

Pyewacket 70's time correction in ORR/ORC mode under IRC, in the recent Rolex Fastnet was 1.722, under an optimised IRC sail plan, that TCF drops to 1.672 - or a gain of 3 mins per hour.

"The boat is just an absolute weapon, reaching and running, and if it's a windy, reaching, or running race, Pyewacket 70 will win on handicap.

"In the 2021 Cabo [San Lucas] 800nm race, it was light at the start and light at the end, but we averaged 21 knots for the whole race.

"We ended up breaking the record by over 16 hours (previously held by an 80fter),” Mitchell recalls.

“We did the Cabo 800 in just a little over a day and a half, and we corrected out first by several hours. The boat is happy in that stuff because it's quite light. It's got quite a lot of sail area, and it's a little lighter than the stock Volvo 70 because it has a deeper fin and a smaller bulb. And the mast is light as well."

Evergreen Volvo70

The 30-boat fleet in the revived Admiral's Cup earlier this year underlined the resurgence of older race boats that have been upgraded to stay competitive. Only one new boat was built for the series, and the oldest was from 2011 - and was one of the top performers.

Similarly with the Volvo 70, which is one of the few design genres, and certainly the longest, to have survived and crossed over into mainstream offshore racing. Their particular strength is the classic ocean races - Sydney Hobart, Fastnet, and Bermuda Races.

"The Volvo 70 is an incredibly good all-around boat," says Mitchell.

"If you're going to do a lot of racing, you probably would want to address the sail plan issues and get them a little bit more optimised than what we had it. And then I think you'd find the boat does really well."

"We won the Caribbean 600 and were second overall in the Bermuda Race. We won the Cabo Race. However, any Volvo 70 will do well in those conditions.’

“Tschuss [formerly Groupama 4, Giacomo and Wizard] is also a very good boat. Under various owners, that boat has won the Caribbean 600, the Fastnet, and the Sydney Hobart. The Volvo 70’s have won all of the races and are still incredibly competitive under all three rules - ORR, IRC and ORC.”

"For the 600-700nm races, which are typically fast races, and are two nights at most, the VO70s are great.”

Record breaking

"Pyewacket 70 did quite well in the Transpac. We won the Barn Door trophy and took six or seven hours off of Comanche's record. The boat's not going to beat the 100-footers, boat-for-boat. But we'll correct out on handicap, out on them, without much difficulty.

"I think we actually had a 24-hour run in the Transpac that matched what Comanche did. Comanche held the record for point-to-point during the day - a roll call-to-roll call, which was like 503 miles. We had a 24-hour run at 512nm, but it wasn't roll call-to-roll call. So it's not an official record, but it definitely matched what Comanche had done during the Transpac,” Mitchell says.

"Pyewacket's certainly capable of having some spectacular results in a nice, windy downwind race. It's amazing as far as control - the boat feels like she is on railroad tracks.

“In the five years that we've sailed the boat, I don't think the boat has been wiped out once. It's just amazing. It has twin rudders that are not that big, and she just tracks along. You'd really have to really try to get in trouble to have an issue."

After the 2011-2012 Volvo Ocean Race, Telefónica , the fourth-placed VO70 was purchased by Queenslander Peter Harburg, renamed BlackJack, and usually skippered by Harburg's long-time sailing partner, Mark Bradford. They IRC-optimised the offshore maxi by extending the mast, main boom, sprit, and keel. The changes were aimed more at improving the speed and line-honours potential of the Volvo 70 than at optimising the rating.

The changes made under Disney's ownership have been focused on improving Pyewacket's 70's systems, says Mitchell.

“The interior, which used to be all black, has been painted in the "living area" of the boat, so it's not quite as dark.

“Almost all of the systems, the lines, the winch packages, everything has been refined and or replaced. We have a much more efficient system than the installed water ballast. The canting keel systems have also been upgraded.

“We would start putting water in, upwind when it was blowing around 12-13 knots, and then downwind, depending on how windy it was - maybe 14kts or 15kts, we'd start putting some water in or whenever we needed a little bit more stability, or trim.

"The Volvos all have a little bit of a bow down mode. Our water ballast tanks are aft, we have 1200 litres on each side, and so we can transfer between tanks in about 45 seconds."

"The Blackjack guys did a nice job on the upgrades, but everything needed some refinement and improvements, and wherever we could make an improvement, that was done. No stone was left unturned."

Pushing the turbo-ed Volvo 70 to realise her potential, but staying within the safe racing limits, requires plenty of alarms and sensors to monitor loads on sails, rig and boat.

"There are load cells on absolutely everything, on the deflectors, on the check stays, on the lower check stays,” explains Mitchell. “There are load cells on each tack for the stay sails, including the general stay cell - where you put the J4 inside when you're triple heading, and there are load cells out on the sprit.”

"We've got full readouts, and we have tables on each setup where the mast has to be, and what the maximum loads are for that particular setup. So we're always very conscious of that."

"The alarms are right there in the pit. All the sails are on locks, and a sensor buzzes to confirm that you're completely on lock.”

"We replaced all the daggerboard bearings, in fact, the whole daggerboard system. The boards themselves are the originals, refinished a couple of times, and the most recent was superb. With all the new bearings in there, they don't get marked up like they were with the old system." Throughout Roy P Disney’s ownership, Pyewacket 70 has been dry-sailed and maintained by several full-time crew. “Ever since Roy bought the boat, until when it went into the shed in Gosport (UK) there were at least three guys working on the boat,” Mitchell says.

“The condition of the boat is just stunning. You're not going to find anything that needs to be replaced, which is nice, because a lot of times, just buying the boat is the Entry Fee, and then you've got to spend a fortune getting the thing ready to go out on the race course.”

“With Pyewacket 70, you buy it, put the mast up and race.”

Pyewacket 70's recent results include:

• 2025 Antigua Sailing Week – Line Honours, Overall Winner
• 2024 Bermuda Race – Line Honours
• 2023 RORC Caribbean 600 – Line Honours & IRC Overall Winner
• 2023 Pineapple Cup – Line Honours
• 2022 Pacific Cup – Line Honours
• 2022 Puerto Vallarta – New Course Record
• 2021 Transpac Race – Line Honours
• 2021 Cabo San Lucas – Line Honours, Overall Winner, Race Record
• 2020 Puerto Vallarta – Class Winner

Like to know more? Contact McD Yachts or Juan Yacht Design
Contact: Paul MacDonald
Ph/WhatsApp: +64 27 5133 524
Email:
Web: www.mcdyachts.com/pyewacket

Or: Philippe Oulhen
Ph/WhatsAPP: +34 668 119 999
Email: