On
Board Report
Being There
Greetings from Porto Calero….Moving day for Mutua Madrilena.
 Artemis taking a dive and Cayard with a raregood moment in the TP 52 class. Max Ranchi took this shot. |
Flavio Favini, Vasco Vascotto, and Francesco Bruni nailed it as an
afterguard and the boat handling backed up the decision making at the TP
52 World Championships today. From start to finish in both races
they started well, sailed fast and were patient. Easy to say but hard
to do as the breeze was shifting through 20 degrees and deciding which
shift to take and which shift to hold on was difficult. Jochen Schumann
and team aboard Platoon sailed to a very consistent 3,3 which was very
good considering in the first race they came back from an OCS to finish
second on the day. Rounding out the top three was Bribon with Dean Barker
and Ross Macdonald weaving their way through traffic.
For us aboard the Quantum Racing it was a bit more survival. We sailed
to a fourth on the day with a 4, 6 but with that I think we did really
good work. The difficult thing that you don’t get in this story
is that the conditions are very tough and all the teams are battling.
Mutua and Platoon sailed very well to have the consistency that they
did but from my perspective the J/V boats are in there sweet spot from
a design perspective, 9-11 knots and flat water lower drag in hull form
then the Quantum Racing. We have known that all year and so we have
to keep hanging tough. Charlie McKee summed it up best. “The competition
is so good and the conditions so tough that inevitably you just have
to be last man standing as it won’t be pretty at times”.
Probably a pretty good motto to live by for the time being. On deck
for tomorrow is a 30-45 mile coastal race. This reeks of an absolute
bum fight if the conditions remain dicey. Either way we need to keep
fighting hard and let the chips fall…
Best Regards,
Terry Hutchinson
