Thrillingly close racing
The second edition of The Nations Trophy attracted teams from 14 countries... and an impressive turn-out of the world’s best sailors
The second edition of The Nations Trophy, from 8 to 12 October, was a storming success that cemented the position of Nautor’s Swan’s biennial headline event as one of the world’s foremost owner-driver one-design yacht regattas. Many top professional sailors came to race alongside impressively skilled amateurs. To quote North Sails’ president Ken Read, the tactician aboard the ClubSwan 50 Cuordileone, ‘It is a testament to a lot of people taking the event seriously’.
Not only that but it marks the welcome return of nation-versus- nation yacht racing, which used to be a hallmark feature of many classic regattas. With 14 countries represented in The Nations Trophy, the concept clearly has broad international appeal. The previous winners, Spain, were back to defend their title against teams from Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Held for the second time in the excellent natural yacht racing arena of Mallorca’s Palma Bay and hosted once again by Real Club Náutico de Palma (RCNP), The Nations Trophy 2019 attracted the largest ever
66 SEAHORSE
gathering of Swan one-designs. Some 41 yachts competed in four classes with world and European championship titles at stake. There was an impressive turn-out of 18 ClubSwan 50s, which made for an amazing spectacle on the start line. With the class world championship title up for grabs most teams had hired top professional sailors to join their crews: Bouwe Bekking was on Niramo, Iker Martinez on Mathilde, Chris Larson on Earlybird, Jochen Schümann on OneGroup, Pietro D’Ali on Drifter Sail, Fernando Echávarri on Skorpios and Cameron Dunn aboard Bronenosec, to name but a few.
The racing in the seven-boat Swan 45 fleet, also competing for world championship honours, was thrillingly close all the way through the regatta. A strong entry of 12 ClubSwan 42s for their European championship showed the enduring popularity of that class and guaranteed intense (but friendly) competition. And the event was also a major milestone in the evolution of ClubSwan one-designs with the widely anticipated racing début of the brand new, next-generation ClubSwan 36, four of which turned up for their first regatta.
Above: the 18-strong fleet of
ClubSwan 50s made a magnificent sight on the Bay of Palma crewed by many of the worldʼs best sailors including Olympic gold medallists, Americaʼs Cup veterans along with numerous world
champions
Racing on Day One was delayed by the fickle breeze and when it got under way there were some surprise winners. In the ClubSwan 50 class, two boats – Dmitry Rybolovlev’s Skorpios (Russia) and Cuordileone (Italy) owned by Nautor’s Swan president Leonardo Ferragamo – led the fleet most of the way around the course in a closely fought duel. On the last leg, however, a bold tactical play by Ross Warburton’s Perhonen (Great Britain) overtook them to win the race.
‘We were in third place at the last upwind mark and then, heading downwind, we extended further out to the right-hand corner picking up a little bit of a shift before we gybed back,’ Perhonen’s tactician Ian Budgen explained. ‘The average wind angle had been around 200°, but after we gybed it went to about 215-220° and we got about 10-15° on the two boats ahead.’ It was a calculated risk. ‘I thought they had gybed too early,’ he said. ‘We had seen better angles on the previous upwind leg and we were not going to win a three-boat race to the line. So we left the other two to their race and hoped for a bit of luck. We had sufficient separation from the boats behind, which made it less risky.’
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