Soto 40 World Championship - Day 1

by Soto40 Media on 7 Jul 2014 Today the 2014 Soto World Championship started with the first activities scheduled for the day, including registration of the teams, measuring and inspections. Tomorrow the competitors will have a practice race and while the first official races are scheduled on Tuesday.

The activity started early in the 'Veles e Vents' building, located in the Marina Real Juan Carlos I, where the teams came to complete their weighing and registration. One of the registrated teams was the British Ngoni, which is taking on board nothing less than John Kostecki, who was skipper in the Volvo Ocean Race and tactician in the America’s Cup, besides winning ten world champion titles in different classes and a silver medal in Soling, which he achieved in the 1988 Olympic Games. This is the first time that Kostecki competes on board a Soto 40 and he explained: 'This will be kind of a learning experience for me. So far it’s been very nice, seems like the boats are very equal and they are challenging for the crew and everyone has an important role to play on board the boat so it’s been fun'.

Regarding the measuring process, Pablo Ferrer, Chief Measurer of the Soto 40 International Class, told us: 'The official measurements of the championship where scheduled from Sunday to Monday but we also had to do the weighing of the boats and we were running out of time on weekend, so we managed to gather together all the boats and we started to control the weight of all the boats on Friday morning. They are all weighed in Class weight. Today we’ve started with the crew weighing, security inspections, maneuver and work distribution in deck and deck inside, because in one design boats with this kind of rules you can’t add elements or things to improve the racing performance. We’ve done some sail measurements too. Tomorrow we’ll work on Bigamist, which had a structural breakdown and it went to dock repair it. We have to measure the sails of the French and German boat. Then during the championship we’ll make more controls, during the races we’ll get on board, we’ll measure more sails –we’ve measured the mainsails which are the most difficult to move and work-'.

The World Championship will last until July 12th and eight boats will be competing: are Alegre (IVB), Bigamist (POR), Earlybird (GER), Glen Ellen XXII (FRA), Ngoni (GBR), Noticia IV (ESP), Uon (POR), and Santander (CHI). The event headquarter is the Marina Real Juan Carlos I, which is a place deeply related to sailing for the reason that two America’s Cup editions were held there, events that transformed the city of Valencia into one of the main tourist destinations in the Mediterranean.

Measurements, inspections and registrations will continue tomorrow, while the boats will participate in a practice race tomorrow afternoon. After that we’ll have a welcome cocktail at the Marina Real Juan Carlos I.

Schedule (CEST):