2016 Atlantic Cup - Spanish team Tales II wins Leg 2

by Julianna Barbieri on 7 Jun 2016 2016 Atlantic Cup - Tales II skippered by Gonzalo Botín and Pablo Santurde won leg two of the The Atlantic Cup presented by 11th Hour Racing, a 360-nautical mile leg from Brooklyn to Portland. The win marks back to back offshore wins for the team, which puts them on top of the leaderboard heading into the third and final leg a crewed inshore series to be sailed this June 10th and 11th in Casco Bay, Maine.

Gonzalo Botín, said, “The worst thing is when you have expectations. Last night we thought we would finish early in the morning. Basically the wind died, at sea you have to always accept what comes. You can’t just say ‘I’m gonna be there at six in the morning’ because then you’re not there at six in the morning and you’re pissed off. We’re very pleased with how we sailed the leg. Last night we had between 25 and 30 knots. It was fun, it was good — except we exploded one of our spinnakers and made a big mess.

The whole spinnaker was wrapped around the stay, there was sail all over the place. There was a piece of the spinnaker dragging behind the boat that we had to pull back on board. We were stopped for about an hour trying to get rid of the mess. There’s still bits of sail all over the place! But other than that we had some good surfing and good speeds.”

Pablo Santurde said, 'Compared to the first leg, this was tactically more difficult because of the light wind. The first half of the race was very light so it was tactically more challenging than just pushing the boat in heavy air. The first night it was very light so keeping the boat going forward was very difficult, that was the hardest part of the race.”