Soto 40 World Championship - Competition strengthens in Valencia

by Soto 40 Media on 11 Jul 2014 Today we celebrated the third day of races at the Soto 40 World Championship in Valencia’s waters. The winners were the boats Earlybird, property of Hendrik Brandis, and Tony Buckingham’s Ngoni, which returned to top position overall with 19 points. It was also a hard day of work for the Umpires.

The sixth race of the event started at 1:05 pm with an 11 knots SE wind. The Spanish Noticia IV, property of Luis Martín Cabiedes, with José María 'Pichu' Torcida at the helm, made a good start and was the first to reach the first windward mark, followed by Pedro Mendonça’s Bigamist and Ngoni, which in the second mark managed to take the lead and continue in that position until the end of the course. Bigamist and Noticia IV arrived after the British boat. With this result, Ngoni added its second victory and returned to the first place overall. Mark Lamy, Ngoni’s helm, said: 'We had a good start, a good beat, tactics were good, and crew work was fantastic. It was a perfect first race for us, close, but a good race. The key is getting it all right, good starts, good crew work, good tactics. That’s what we had in the first race, it was fantastic. We’d love to keep going as we are, we’d love to win this championship but there’s still some very good competition there and the boats are still evenly matched, so it’s still very close competition'.

The second race of the day started at 2:35 pm with a 14 knots wind from the same direction that progressively moved to the East to end at 125°, reason why the Race Committee had to make a course change. Once again Noticia IV started leading the fleet but then the German Earlybird managed to be the first to cross the finish line, achieving its first victory in this championship. Hendrik Brandis, owner and helm of the winner boat, described: 'We fortunately and finally did a good race, we had a really tough day yesterday but boats are absolutely equal. We had an excellent start. We’ve been second at the first upwind mark, good run but still second, then very good second upwind and then we made it to the first place and we could defend it. It was a race without mistakes. I think the fleet is so close that if you commit a mistake you are punished and this was actually a race in which we didn’t commit a mistake'.

From the Technical point of view, Andrés Pérez, President of the ISAF Judge Subcommittee, explained that it was a hard day for the Umpires: 'Today we had four red flags and a green one. It was the most active day of the week. I think now the competition is intensifying, the end of the World Championship is coming and the crews are getting tough, playing with the limits. Besides, these events didn’t have Umpires in the water last year, except for the World Championship. I guess people get used to the Umpires and they play with the limits, regarding maneuvers and everything, because they know that we are there. It isn’t the same to defend something in the protest room than when then Umpire is in the water, so the crews don’t sail in the same way'.

With seven races, Ngoni adds 19 points and returns to top position. José Manuel Caldeira’s Uon moves to the second place with 24 points, while Noticia IV occupies third place with one more unit. Regarding today’s winner, Earlybird, it moved from the seventh to the fifth position.

The Soto 40 World Championship is being held at the Marina Real Juan Carlos I (Valencia, Spain) and it will last until July 12th. You can follow races live with the links available on the event website.