PalmaVela 2015 – Azzurra shows her stuff with successive wins

by Azzurra Sailing Team on 3 May 2015 PalmaVela 2015 – Back to back wins bring Azzurra to the head of a tight pack and tomorrow will be the final day of racing.

Two windward/leeward races today at Palma, with southerly winds between 14 and 21 knots, much stronger than forecast. Azzurra was ready and showed her stuff thanks to her crew who worked well and found the right set up in this wind range. Because even if two first place wins are always nice, the real reason for this race is finding the right set up for the 52 Super Series which will soon begin.

Both races saw Azzurra, flying the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda’s burgee, get perfectly timed starts, upwind from the rest of the fleet. From there Azzurra kept her lead throughout, increasing her distance from the rest of the fleet. Not even a problem with the tacking line on the gennaker on the first downwind run stopped her: Interlodge temporarily took the lead only to be passed by Azzurra on a very quick recovery. Azzurra was again in the lead at the downwind gate and won with a minute’s advantage over the second placed boat, Interlodge, followed by Alegre and Quantum.

Skipper Guillermo Parada had these words
“Today was better, but it’s a lot easier when the boat is moving quickly. We had two nice clean starts that allowed the boat to be in the right place and obviously we had good speed so that made the whole day a lot easier. We had a straight shot to the layline, picked the right time to tack and controlled the fleet well and then it was a much simpler job. We were not a disaster couple of days ago and we’re not the best in the world today; it’s a continuing process and the important thing is that we have a lot more ideas so we came to the regatta with more ideas to keep testing so hopefully by the end of this week we’ll have a lot of information to go to Valencia well prepared. Today was a good lesson. In the breeze we’re going reasonably well. We still have to improve in light air, but we’ll be here for a few more days after the event so we still have our homework to do.”


Tactician Vasco Vascotto’s comment
“It was a great day, but the race results are not as important as the good feelings we are getting from the boat. Yesterday things went well even though we didn’t get winning results like today. It seems like we’re doing well in wind, we got two good starts and after that we could sail at our best. We’re on the right track, we’re doing our tests, we were comfortable and relaxed in the past few days and we still are today. Maybe even more so.”


52 Super Series 2015 calendar
18 to 23 May: Valencia (Spain)
8 to 13 June: Porto Cervo (Italy, Sardinia)
13 to 18 July: Puerto Portals (Spain, Mallorca)
3 to 8 August: Palma de Mallorca (Spain)
15 to 20 September: Cascais (Portugal)