38 Copa del Rey MAPFRE: Back to the Future?

The idea is that the counters are reset and the pressure and interest is kept up to the end of Saturday’s racing.

And of course there are already teams who gain and some who are already hurting. But, ask many of the leading skippers what they think and the universal response is ‘Ask me again at the end of Saturday.’

In what is probably the most competitive fleet with a sizeable entry, the ClubSwan 50s, Leonardo Ferragamo’s leading crew see their seven points margin gained over six races cut back to one point. Correspondingly today’s winners of the one and only race sailed today, Stefan Heidenreich’s OneGroup, go into the finals in sixth with their 19 points deficit behind first cut to five points.

OneGroup’s four times Olympic medallist Jochen Schumann is one who relishes the change. Winners today they bounce back from a ‘black day’ yesterday when they had DSQ and a 12th,

“Now it is all about the finals tomorrow and Saturday.” Smiles Schumann, “ For us as a good revenge on the black day we had yesterday. Yesterday to be quite honest with you, we started actually quite well but we struggled on the downwinds. And we had a protest which we lost. All in all nothing major but the scoreboard looks really ugly with 12th and DSQ so we dropped down a lot. So, the win today was good was a big lead. But the first place didn’t help us, we are still sixth which we were yesterday night. I think this is a normal situation now I think this is good.” 

Today was the first day that H.M. King Felipe of Spain steered Aifos 500, the Spanish Navy’s ClubSwan 50 meeting up again with long time friend and rival H.M. King Harald of Norway who is steering Fram XVIII. Today the Spanish monarch, who represented his country at the 1992 Olympics, had the upper hand in sixth, Fram finishing tenth.

“ It’s wonderful to see both kings racing in this fleet.” Schumann remarked, “ I think it’s good that they have the time and the understanding of their people to come here to sail with us. I have a long friendship with Felipe. We sailed Solings together for four years, we practiced against each other every day for the Barcelona Games. For me he is Felipe, and this is how he comes to us sailors. To come down here and to be a sailor amongst sailors is great.” 

In the Mallorca Sotheby’s IRC Fleet Dario Ferrari’s Cannonball won today, their fourth win in seven starts. Trimmer Federico Michetti reported, “We made a very good start and the boat was going very well, we had good tactics from Ed Baird and Michele Ivaldi who took us right and the breeze came up a little and we made an easy cross and then we could manage first place. We are very happy but the boat speeds are very similar so we cannot make any mistakes. It is very open and we are having fun.”

Michetti added, “I like the new scoring system. It makes is challenging to the end and keeps the game open to the end. I will evaluate to see how it goes and might introduce it for our classes (Melges). The guys who are leading might not like it, but I think it is very cool and you need to keep pushing to the end.”

In the GC32 class Oman Air won three of the six races sailed today and now lie four points ahead of the world champions Alinghi.  The GC32s sail a normal series, Adam Minoprio the Oman Air skipper said. “Today was a great day for Oman Air. We had three good races in good sea breeze, great foiling conditions with reaching starts and we managed to win all three races so we started off with a bang; from then the wind dropped off and got light and shifty and we moved to upwind starts and had good fights with the other teams and managed to secure a third and a second so on the whole it was a great day and we managed to extend our lead on the fleet”.

It remains close in the BMW ORC 0 class where Jean Luc Petithuguenin’s TP52 Paprec Reciclaje won with Loick Peyron calling tactics, skipper Stephan Neve reported, “We had a difficult start, we did not start well and had to tack behind and wait for a few boats. Loick wanted to go to the right and that proved to be best and we rounded the top mark first and from there we extended a little bit, we could control Rowdy and we were quite lucky in that Team Vision Future had a bad start, they were OCS and had to go back.” 

The French skipper is objective about the new scoring, “Meantime everything goes back to the beginning, it is like a new regatta starting tomorrow. For sure it is better to be where we are, leading, rather than in the back. The others are a serious threat. Frecccia Rossa are sailing well and have a good rating. We have a really good mix of young guys on board, they bring a lot of energy and are very active on the boat. And Loick has done very little of this kind of racing but he has a great natural feel for the wind and where to go, he is not a head in the computer guy, he is looking at the water and at the other boats, what is going on the shore.”