At the RC44 Valencia Cup, the southeasterly breeze came up in the early afternoon, to peak at 20 knots and the Saturday sun worshippers on Malvarossa Beach where treated to one spectacular day of close yacht racing that was challenging for many of the crews, pushing their skills to the absolute limit.
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Beachcombers have a ringside seat at RC44s Photo: Lulu Roseman |
Team Aqua and Artemis both got two wins and have leapfrogged to first and second respectively, leaving James Spithill and his young crew on 17 scratching their heads and vowing to make a comeback today. Peter Heerema's No Way Back with Ray Davies onboard scored two seconds followed by eighth and a ninth to secure fourth position on the leader board and as current tour leaders, are looking for a strong finish tomorrow.
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Team Aqua lead Artemis at windward mark in Race 7 Photo: Lulu Roseman |
Kyle Langford, who is racing in his first RC44 regatta onboard 17, explains what happened in the second day fleet racing after such an amazing result of three wins out of four on Friday.
"The main difference today was there was a bit more breeze and the sea state was a bit more lumpy and we did have good starts and clear air but we just couldn't quite hold our lane and pinch the guys to windward. In the first race we overlaid the top mark by quite a bit and came in mid fleet. In the second race it was a similar story, we got bounced out to the left and we forced duck a few sterns, but in the last run we made some really good gains downwind to finish fourth. We rounded the mark seventh so got three boats on the run. We struggled to hold our height in that wind and chop but we didn't get the boat in tune with the wind conditions like we did on Friday," Langford said.
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17 Photo: Lulu Roseman |
Racing will resume on Sunday at 12:00pm.
RC 44 VALENCIA CUP
(Fleet racing provisional results)
1. Team Aqua / Chris Bake (UAE) 2-3-5-4-3-1-1-4, 23 points
2. Artemis / Torbjorn Tornqvist (SWE) 5-7-2-6-1-3-2-1, 27 points
3. 17 / Anders Myralf (USA) 1-4-1-1-5-4-5-10, 32 points*
4. No Way Back / Pieter Heerema (NED) 8-2-7-5-2-8-9-2, 43 points
5. BMW ORACLE Racing / Maxim Logutenko (USA) 10-6-4-2-4-6-6-5, 43 points
6. Katusha / Guennadi Timtchenko (RUS) 9-1-8-3-10-9-3-6, 49 points
7. Team Sea Dubai / Harm Mueller-Speer (UAE) 7-8-11-9-7-2-7-3, 54 points
8. Ceeref / Igor Lah (SLO) 6-11-3-7-8-10-4-7, 56 points
9. Islas Canarias Puerto Calero / Daniel Calero (ESP) 3-9-9-10-6-5-8-8, 58 points
10. AEZ RC44 Sailing Team / Rene Mangold (AUT) 4-10-10-8-11-7-11-9, 70 points
11. Mascalzone Latino Audi Team / Vincenzo Onorato (ITA) 11-5-6-11-9-11-10-11, 74 points
(* includes 1 point penalty by International Jury)
Lulu Roseman