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Photo: © Martinez Studio.es / RC44 Class |
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Photo: © Martinez Studio.es / RC44 Class |
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Photo: © Martinez Studio.es / RC44 Class |
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Photo: © Martinez Studio.es / RC44 Class |
![]() |
Photo: © Martinez Studio.es / RC44 Class |
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Photo: © Martinez Studio.es / RC44 Class |
He said that the boat was going well upwind thanks to a few tweaks they had made to the rig.
Going into the final race, Team CEEREF was tied on points with Chris Bake's Team Aqua, both just one point astern of the leader, Vladimir Liubomirov's Bronenosec Sailing Team.
With the wind showing signs of reaching the 25+ knots forecast for the afternoon, today's third and final race saw Vladimir Prosikhin's Team Nika take the win, her first of this regatta, where she is finding her feet with some new crew. This she managed on the first beat, by edging ahead out to the left and then crossing ahead of everyone after she'd tacked back.
Team Nika, the defending fleet racing champion, has had a slow start to this regatta, starting today in unfamiliar territory - the bottom half of the fleet. Matters got worse in today's second race when they trawled their kite at the top of the final run causing several expensive items of gear to go 'ping' down below. However in the final race they redeemed themselves. "The last race showed that the guys can perform and there's still potential and let's hope that it is a climb-up," mused Prosikhin. "It is much better to have 4-8-1 than the reverse!"
Tactician for Team Nika this season is Ed Baird. "It was an interesting day because we had some rain come through, some breeze and occasionally less breeze," said the 2007 America's Cup winning helmsman. "Downwind the puffs were very important."
Their race win was not enough improve Team Nika's fifth place. Similarly a fourth place for Team CEEREF left her third overall, two points adrift of Team Aqua and Bronenosec Sailing Team, the joint leaders after seven races, demonstrating just how close competition is here on Bermuda's Great Sound.
Of great relief to the class was the welcome return of Torbjörn Törnqvist's Artemis Racing, after she was severely holed in yesterday's first race. Intensive overnight repairwork was carried out on the 1 x 0.6m section of damaged topsides by boatbuilders at the Swedish team's America's Cup base where the final layer of laminate went down around midnight. After a new vinyl cover had been applied to the repaired section of hull shortly before racing this morning, the repair was difficult to spot.
With racing finishing early today, the RC44 sailors took the opportunity to go on a tour of Artemis Racing's newly opened America's Cup base.
Follow the racing via the live blog at www.rc44.com
RC44 Media
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