D-One Volvo Cup Act 3 - Second to newcomer Nick Craig

by Devoti-One on 5 Jul 2012 Act 3 of the D-One Volvo Cup was held last weekend in sun and a lovely six to nine knots seabreeze, a perfect scenario for the 20 boat fleet.

Twenty sailors from four countries enjoyed the easy sailing, with lot of fun on the water and time for relaxing ashore, as usual in the D-One philosophy.

Four races were sailed. On Saturday Nick Craig, a dinghy champion and newcomer in the class from UK, showed great speed in the runs taking race 1 with an huge advantage on Riccardo Pontremoli and Luca Ievolella. Argentinian Agustin Zabalua, light wind specialist and former D-One Gold Cup winner, lost some pressure in the first run to finish eight.

Race 2 was sailed in eight to nine knots breeze, with speed up to 10 knots in the runs for the D-Oners. Agustin Zabalua didn't wait to recover his normal place and went to win this one in easy mode. Second was Andrea Magni (also first master), that showed a brand new boat from Devoti Sailing. Third was Nick Craig.

On Sunday, the warning signal was scheduled at 12:00 and the breeze built up at 12:30. The RC went for race 3, sailed in five knots ESE breeze.

Agustin Zabalua's lead all over the race was solid, with Andrea Gancia in second and Craig again in third. At that point, four sailors had a real chance to win the event discarding his worst results from the first three races. Top two were Zabalua (8-1-1) and Craig (1-3-3). After a great port tack start at the pin for Paolo Rossi, Zabalua managed to control the fleet going deep right rounding mark 1 in first followed by Guido Falciola and Luca Ievolella.

Craig showed again great speed in the run and closed the gap downwind, but a bad gennaker lowering gave Zabalua more space to escape. All decided? Not at all, as Craig sailed a marvellous last run catching 100 meters to Zabalua, that managed to win the double point Medal Race by only one boat lenght just on the finish line.

Agustin Zabalua (8-1-1-1) won the event, with Nick Craig in second (1-3-3-2) and Luca Ievolella in third (3-7-9-3). Andrea Magni was fourth and first master. Andrea Gancia was fifth.

Cattolica, a well known toutistic venue in the Adriatic Sea, hosted the event in the Yacht Club Marina di Cattolica.

The next act of the Volvo Cup D-One will be the Italian Open Championship, to be held in the magnificent scenario of Argentario, Tuscany, hosted by Yacht Club Santo Stefano from July, 20th to 22nd.

Full results here