RC44 Porto Cervo Cup, Peninsula Petroleum leads in the first day of racing

Porto Cervo, June 29, 2017. John Bassadone's Peninsula Petroleum is ahead after day one of the RC44 Porto Cervo Cup following three races and a late finish off the Costa Smeralda and much of the afternoon spent waiting for the wind to stabilise. The RC44 Porto Cervo Cup is organized by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda and will be finish on Sunday, 2nd July.

The opening race of the RC44 Porto Cervo Cup got underway on time at midday in 12-15 knots from the WNW directly off Porto Cervo. In this Alexander Novoselov and his crew on Katusha did a good job to round the top mark in first place. Maintaining control of the race was made easier as a rain squall passed over the course causing the race track to skew on the second lap and the wind to drop to six knots.

Unfortunately after this major cloud activity over northeast Sardinia led the wind to defy the 15-20 knots forecast as it shut down over the race course. As a result the nine-strong RC44 fleet was sent ashore leaving the race committee to wait patiently for the breeze to re-establish.

After a two hour wait ashore, the wind finally materialise and two races were run in 8-10 knots. The first of these was equally shifty with Nico Poon's Charisma was leading at the top mark and then overtaked by Peninsula Petroleum at the photo finish. With Dag von Appen at the helm for this regatta, Peninsula Petroleum managed to hang on for the next lap to take her first bullet of the event.

In the final race Peninsula Petroleum was on a roll, leading at the first top mark rounding. However they then received a dosh of their own medicine when Kirill Frolov at the helm of Bronenosec Sailing Team got a gybe in early to take the lead. This she held to the finish. However with a 5-1-2 today it is Peninsula Petroleum that leads Igor Lah's Team Cereef by two points.

Vasco Vascotto, Peninsula's tactician, said: “It was been good to go back out to race, we had two more races and we should thank 'Luigi' for his patience, it was the right decision. In the last two regattas we raced well and we recovered from the fifth position of the first leg. Dag is a talented helmsman and has a lot of experience from the Soto 40, he handled the boat very well. This is only the first day, but we started in the right way.”