Update
Winner in the Ultims Charles Caudrelier arrives in Guadeloupe after a trouble-free Route du Rhum aboard the 2017 Verdier foiling design Maxi Edmond de Rothschild. Gitana team continue to stay ahead of the newer Ultims through relentless development while always maintaining reliability. The ominous news for rival teams is that Gitana will soon have a new Ultim in the pipeline. ‘We watch our rivals copy us, it’s not that impressive,’ says CEO Cyril Dardashti. Adding, ‘So for the next boat we will do something unusual…’
GLIDE TO THE FINISH – Terry Hutchinson Some regattas you just know things are going to go your way. The final event of the TP52 Super Series, held at the home of the America’s Cup in Barcelona, happened to be that type of event. To paint the picture… on average our first days at these regattas
are a struggle – outside of three sailors most of the team travel across six hours of time zone change. On the best days we are functioning at about 70 per cent of our energy levels. The entire programme is set up to be at our best on day 8 and day 9 of the event. The days that we must execute. Barcelona was no exception. Owner/helmsman Doug [DeVos]
arrived on the Monday of the practice race day. We felt a bit ropier than normal as work, travel and perhaps the moment were evident on the team’s faces. Personally, I was just all about closing out the season with a strong result. The stated goal at the beginning of the year was to win the World
Championship and the Super Series Championship in that order. While Monday was a baseline day it was not our best effort. Poor starting, wrong side of the first shifts and a bit off the pace; jetlag yes, acceptable no! To finish off the perfect day, once back on the beach I realised
that my wet notes had gone missing, lost out of my pocket out on the racecourse. It put me in an internal flap as it was a diary of the season, lessons learnt and settings that, whether useful or not, felt like a bad omen. Morning of day 1 was no different from the previous 38 days of
racing. We started our debrief at 9:00 with coach James talking us through settings, speed, weather and lessons learnt. Also, the proper
14 SEAHORSE
reminder that what we had done all season was not broken, so things did not need to be ‘fixed’ – just refinement. I scribbled away in my flimsy, wannabe wet notes knowing that
there was a certain level of personal discontent. As a creature of habit in competition the same thing every day is paramount for consistency on the water. Down to the boat and container to greet the day and get into the racing… Upon my arrival boat captain Brendan handed me my wet notes
that had gone for a swim the day before. Apparently when Sledwent shrimping with their spinnaker at the bottom mark from a faulty string-line my wet notes were gobbled up inside their A1.5. What are the chances? At that I thought, well, maybe that was a lucky sign for the week.
The world had balanced out and my wet notes that were committed to sinking got engulfed in Sled’s ‘shrimped’ A1.5 and lived on. Now perhaps I was reading too much into it, but as I said earlier
when you live in the competitive moment day in and day out any sign of positivity is welcomed. I quickly put away my wannabe wet notes and got back to the task at hand: winning Barcelona and closing out the Super Series and a chapter in Quantum Racing history in good fashion. Five days of scheduled racing in what can only be qualified as
light. Certainly, if you were sailing an AC75 you would have only foiled on two of the 10 days, yikes! The racecourse was a minefield of shear with a swell and light
chop making the conditions challenging for all the teams. Onboard Quantum Racingwe balanced out ‘the F-it mentality’, just rolling with the conditions and staying in the same piece of water with Phoenix. The true challenge was that these conditions warranted aggressive
PIERRE BOURAS/ALEA
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