Behind you… a little different from Banq Pop (opposite), the 165ft Tripp-designed Better Place steams in at the Voiles de St Tropez. Built in carbon (a lot of carbon), 88 tons of a 250-ton displacement are in the keel and bulb contributing to much more righting moment than is typical of a superyacht this size… just as well, you might say. And incoming (inset)… getting a lot tighter is superyacht racing
TOP END – Terry Hutchinson
Ripping along at 39,000ft aboard United 64 en route to the final TP52 event of the season. Sitting here I feel a bit beaten, yet know I have to get myself up for one more event in an effort to finish with an exclamation mark on a season that I will not soon forget. Of the past 40 days I have been on the water for 33. I love my job but this has been a hard stretch.
The worlds in Mahon, Menorca... tough. As expected. We felt we
had a solid control on the season championship so winning the season but losing the world championship would have been a bit hollow. Mahon is one tricky venue. It is a predominantly right-hand track but how you get there is hard. It is not as simple as come off the boat and tack and yet at times it was that simple, just not that obvious. The challenge of this coupled with 12 strong teams makes for as tough an event as we have seen in a while. Dare I say the best sailors on the best monohulls… Onboard Quantum Racing we sailed an extremely consistent event bar a big hiccough in race 8. We spent seven races building an 18pt-lead, only to go OCS in race 8 with a black flag. Talk about adding unnecessary stress... Being candid, I am certain we all had a little of ‘WTF just happened?’ in our heads. Azzurrafound the hot hand late in the series winning three races
back to back. Momentum shift? Nope, Quantumbattled back to go into the final race with a 5pt cushion. The plan was pretty simple: start in the same zip code and if we are in the bottom half of the line we want to be to windward to defend against the right shift. Ed [Baird] had a great start and from there we pushed Azzurra into the left-hand corner. Oddly enough, as I debrief it in my head I had an absolute brain fade and we let Azzurraout of the left for all of about two minutes. After that mistake we got back in control and from there pounded them into last. But as any good team would, Azzurrakept asking the question and Quantumkept answering.
I must say that as we finished in dying breeze five boats ahead of AzzurraI did have a deep sigh of relief…
From Mahon we went Mallorca, Luxemburg, Zadar, Croatia for the final event of the Farr 40 European circuit. Croatia and specifically the city of Zadar are incredible – in some ways this was a regatta getting in the way of an incredibly fun venue. While we did get some racing in very light and shifty conditions Team Plenty kept its season perfect, but not without a good fight from the competition – Alberto Rossi’s Enfant Terrible was on fire. But I must say, with only five boats at the event, the complexity of the racing was ‘challenging’. The final event of this tour was the Melges 32 Worlds with Alessandro Rombelli and team Stig. This was another marathon as the fleet were greeted with two days of top-end conditions, one day of medium and one day of light. Thirteen boats, onshore it looked as if the TP52 fleet had packed up and transplanted itself to the Newport Shipyard. On Stigwe were defending champions and yet with our time investment limited I was not sure about our chances. The good news is that in the breeze downhill we were fast; the boys were on top of the boat so I knew not to stand in the way of progress and let them do their thing! We ended the day tied for the lead… but getting off the line was already an issue. Sure enough, going into the last day the goal was now ‘podium’. The day was the opposite of how we started: little breeze and I could not get us off the line at all! There was only one way to go… because in both starts we were last. Luckily Alessandro had Stigin a different league upwind. We were able to pick our way through to finish the day 4,1 and move from fourth to second. However, nobody could touch Ryan DeVos and Volpe. The time they spent in the boat showed and they were just plain faster… Usual rules usual result.
SMART – Jonno Turner
The Volvo Ocean Race has made a major rule change to give the best female sailors a clearer pathway to compete at the highest level of offshore sailing. ‘But this is not about lowering the standard
SEAHORSE 9
INGRID ABERY
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