After some tricky practice days when the northerly wind was blowing down from the black peaks of Jandía National Park, for the opening day of the 44Cup Marina Jandía the wind had generously veered beyond the forecast northeast. Blowing down the coast of Fuerteventura, enabled conditions to be more stable than the previous days’ offshore breeze and lighter – a modest 7-10 knots, only building to 13 as a black rain cloud passed overhead in the second race.
In race one Chris Bake’s Team Aqua found a gap three down from the committee boat end and, fully arced up as she crossed the line, enjoyed by far the best start. With the fleet preferring the right, the RC44 Class President’s team was first to reach the weather mark. At the leeward gate she nearly let Marcus Törnqvist’s GeMera Racing in when the two split tacks, but coming back from the left on the second beat Team Aqua just managed to cross her rival and went on to claim the first bullet of the 44Cup Marina Jandía.
Back on form, in today’s third and last race Team Aqua again shone as she pulled into the lead down the first run but let the bullet split through her fingers after she luffed a charging Team Nika, inadvertently letting Aleph Racing through in the process. The finish was so close between the trio of RC44s that the race team had to confirm the finish order after watching the video replay in slow motion – this showed Aleph Racing won but by one or two metres only from Team Aqua and Team Nika, all crossing within one second: 44Cup racing at its best.
Having finished third in the second race, Team Aqua leads after day one but by just one point from Aleph Racing.
“We joined the dots a bit better,” commented a delighted Chris Bake. “We’ve made some small changes on board: Javier [De La Plaza] who sails on Team Ceeref Vaider [not competing this week in Fuerteventura] is helping us with the jib on board and Jonas [Hviid-Nielsen] has a bad back, so we’ve got James [Dodd] as our new pit guy, and that’s helping to create a different dynamic on board, and changing the boat handling a bit. Sometimes you need to do something differently to break it up and obviously this year we just seem to have been struggling for speed.”
Of their performance today Bake added: “It’s good to be fighting in the front rather than fighting at the back. It is still really tight, but it was a decent day. We just have to keep it up now and make sure it is not a one-day wonder!”
In race two Torbjörn Törnqvist’s Artemis Racing again started three down from the boat end of the line and then hooked into a lane to the left of those that had tacked on to port earliest. Tacking at the starboard layline just inside Team Aqua, Artemis Racing was able to slip through her fingers to reach the top mark first. Despite a strong challenge from Bake’s team up the second beat, the Swedish RC44 was able to lead on to the final run and take the bullet from there.
“We had good speed and height and got a good lane and it just went our way,” commented Artemis Racing’s accomplished tactician Hamish Pepper. As to why the right seemed favoured today he observed: “It was quite left at the bottom and then it was quite right at the top although it was not a must-tack-at-the-boat-and-go-right sort of thing. You had to choose your moment and there were pressure lanes and you could fall out of it quite easily. So it wasn’t as simple as ‘start at the boat and go right’.”
Second overall, Aleph Racing helm Hugues Lepic was satisfied with their performance. ”We had a good day but Chris Bake had a fantastic day. I’m very pleased for him. It’s great to see that Aqua is back.”
As to the race three photo finish his team won, Lepic added: “I think at the end we got a little lucky because our friends on Aqua and Nika got into bit of a fight and we took advantage of that to come back. We were leading at the first top mark. I was kind of thinking about this after crossing the line: It carries on being so close which is what makes it so exciting.”
The 44Cup racing is not all about the front runners and behind them competition today could not have been tighter with John Bassadone’s Peninsula Racing, event host Daniel Calero’s Lanzarote Calero Sailing Team, Nico Poons’ Team Charisma, Mehmet Taki and Murat Edin’s Wow! Sailing Team and Jan Scholtes Warp 5 – remarkably all ending the day on 22 points.
“Today was good – we had a good bout with Charisma,” commented Wow! Sailing Team’s Murat Edin, who helmed today. “We’re getting better every time and trying to stay competitive with the group. Today it was way less shifty – still shifty, but not nearly as much as yesterday. Compared to Scheveningen [where the World Championship was in August], this was a much better experience.”
44CUP MARINA JANDIA RESULTS:
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About the 44Cup:
Five-time America’s Cup winner Russell Coutts conceived the design of the light-displacement, high-performance one-design RC44 with naval architect Andrej Justin in 2005. Created for top level one design racing in international regattas under strictly controlled Class Rules, the concept and design features of the RC44 are aimed at the amateur helmsmen with professional crews.
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