Foiling Week creator Luca Rizzotti has yet another success on his hands with the new Foiling SuMoth Challenge. Born out of the highly impressive C-Class Little America’s Cup programme that was successfully put together in 2017 by engineering students from Montreal University, the SuMoth Challenge is a well thought out programme aiming to encourage more students to apply themselves to creating fast sailboats using recycled parts and recyclable materials. The C-Class was judged too ambitious for this role, and so Rizzotti instead created a new set of parameters based around the Moth Class rule box – but these are not Moths, they must simply fit the rule in terms of dimensions. Four university teams (including Southampton’s Moonshot, above) were ready for the first event at Lake Garda where teams were judged primarily on a range of criteria focused around sustainability as much as on performance
From Cascais it was up to Newport, RI for the New York Yacht
Club Race Week with Hap Fauth’s Bella Mente – a return to Bella for Hap as a shoulder injury had had him sidelined since April. But, as with Doug, Bella Mente is always better with Hap onboard. Sadly an unfortunate pre-race snafu aboard Proteus caused an almost rig down scenario which overnight changed this event into a match race between Jim Schwartz’s Vesper and us on the Bella. The two-boat fleet race is a tricky one for both teams. You want
to match race and yet the match racing rules don’t apply. For Bella Mente it was a good test as for the most part Vesper has had the upper hand as we have worked to learn our boat. In St Barth’s Vesper swept Bella Mente aside whereas at the New York Yacht Club Annual the two boats traded races with us gaining the upper hand in the final race to win the series. This time Bella Mente held the upper hand throughout the week.
Hap executed consistent starting, and the team backed it up with consistent boathandling. As the tactician it was really all you ask for and good to see the turnaround of performance over the last three months. But the final and biggest test for Bella Mente will be the Maxi
World Championship in September in Sardinia. This one has eluded the team in the new boat, and I know we are looking forward to the challenge. It will be a difficult one as the battle between Cannonball, Vesper and Proteus will also be good! Standing by in a melting Puerto Portals, Majorca!
THE PERFECT 600-MILER – Dobbs Davis Last year’s inaugural edition of the Aegean 600 attracted a decent turnout, especially considering a one-year pandemic delay and its lingering uncertainty. The bones of the event looked good as they
14 SEAHORSE
were well-supported with all the right features: an inspiring race- course, plenty of enthusiastic and responsive administrative and logistical support, impressive hospitality at social events, and an equally impressive modern full-service marina to start and end the journey… this feature is always attractive for those more used to facing the logistic hassles involved in one-way races. Organisers even hosted an approved Safety Seminar to help
teams in need of certification, which is OSR Cat 3 with liferaft; with everywhere on the racecourse being within easy reach of an island if something did happen, these are much easier criteria for entries to meet and so it opens up the event to a greater variety of teams that would struggle to meet the more strict OSR categories common in the other 600-mile classics. Another unique aspect of this race is having both the start and
finish line positioned under the cliffs at Cape Sounion… with the ancient Temple of Poseidon overlooking the venue. Kind of cool and when you’re there you don’t need to be a historian to appreciate – and indeed feel – how symbolic and inspiring this site has been to sailors for thousands of years. Despite some rather light weather in the first half of the race,
that first edition last year was a success and a suitable proof of concept that the event was viable and could grow much larger in the future. So race organisers at the Hellenic Offshore Racing Club (HORC) quickly agreed to commit to the event running annually with an early-July timeframe. More uncertainty entered the frame for this year’s second edition,
with the onset of war in Europe and a ban on Russian boats and sailors, which affected some 20 per cent of the early entry lists. Yet HORC pressed on, and we’re all glad they did: the second event this year was a resounding success. All the key features of the infrastructure of the race were there
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