Azzurra's ups and downs at the Rolex TP52 World Championship

by Azzurra on 17 May 2017 The YCCS yacht won the first race but suffered through the next two. Platoon is now leading the series followed by Quantum, with Azzurra in third.

The Rolex TP52 World Championship got off to an early start today to try to get three races off, after having only one race yesterday because of the unstable wind. At 11:35 the starting procedure began with a north-easterly gradient breeze, which dropped off during the race causing the committee to shorten the course, with the finish at the second windward mark. Azzurra won the race, with a good start and constant control over her adversaries, especially Quantum who continued to attack taking advantage of the shifty breeze.

The shifty conditions were an unpleasant surprise for the next race which started with a 12 to 15 knot breeze from the north-west. Azzurra and Quantum had good starts on the committee boat end and both caught the first right hand shift, but then the wind suddenly went left. Gladiator and Platoon, after a pin end start, immediately took advantage of the shift and stretched ahead to cover the rest of the fleet.

After finishing last in the previous race, Gladiator won her first race in the Worlds, while Platoon confirms excellent regularity: the German boat is rather more than the third wheel. Azzurra is continuing to give her best and limited damage with a sixth place finish, with Quantum in eighth, as if there was a need to show how hard it is to dominate in this ultra-competitive class.

The third race was not a happy one for Azzurra. She could have finished well, but things went differently and while perfectly placed for a pin end start, she then had to fight to avoid last place. Azzurra managed to finish in eighth place, but that wasn’t enough.

Guillermo Parada, skipper of Azzurra, describes today: “It was a difficult day, the first race was run in a falling shore breeze, so much so that the race committee had to shorten course with the finish at the second windward mark. We managed to win by controlling Quantum, but just barely. Later the thermal breeze filled in and we managed to finish two more races. In the first one the wind was still very shifty and after a right hand shift, which we caught, it went way left favoring the boats who had started on the pin end. We managed to limit our loss, with a sixth place in front of Quantum. In the third race things were complicated right from the start. We believe we were fouled at the pin by Alegre; this slowed us down and we couldn’t port tack the fleet. Then, when we were crossing the sterns of the first boats, we made a communications error on board that forced us to make two tacks one right after the other and we lost contact with the leaders. From then on it was a battle in the back of the fleet; we managed to recover two positions and finish eighth. We know where we made our mistakes, now we have to clear our minds and keep moving ahead to climb back in the coming days.”

Tomorrow’s racing calls for a 25-30 mile coastal race, with the possibility to run another windward-leeward if the coastal race finishes early. The forecast is for a south-easterly gradient breeze, between 8 and 18 knots, with the usual 1pm start.

Rolex TP52 World Championship - Day two after four races
1. Platoon (GER, Harm Müller-Spreer), (2,3,2,2) 9 points
2. Quantum Racing (Doug DeVos, USA), (1,2,8,1) 12 p.
3. Azzurra (Familia Roemmers, ITA/ARG), (3,1,6,8) 18 p.
4. Alegre (Andrés Soriano GBR/USA), (5,6,4,4) 19 p.
5. Gladiator (Tony Langley, GBR) (6,10,1,3) 20 p.
6. Sorcha (Peter Harrison, GBR), (7,4,3,10) 24 p.
7. Rán Racing (Niklas Zennström, SWE), (10,5,5,7) 27 p.
8. Sled (Takashi Okura, USA), (4,9,7,9) 29 p.
9. Bronenosec (Vladimir Liubomirov, RUS), (8,7,9,5) 29 p.
10. Provezza (Ergin Imre, TUR) (9,8,10,6) 33 p.