Royal Cup Marina Ibiza - Azzurra consolidates its second place

by Azzurra Sailing Team on 20 Sep 2014 With a second place in Friday's coastal race, Azzurra consolidates its second place in the Zenith Royal Cup in Ibiza and climbs to second as well in the overall standings of the Barclays Super 52 Series. Winner of the coastal race was the outsider Phoenix.

A coastal race was on schedule today, third day of racing on the waters of Ibiza for the final event of the Barclays 52 Super Series: nearly 30 miles from Marina Ibiza that brought the TP52 fleet to round the island of Tagomago, whose high cliffs always create a cone of calm that puts tacticians into a tough situation when trying to negotiate the passage.

Azzurra had a great start and rounded the offset mark in the lead, closely followed by Gladiator, which in those light winds is slightly faster downwind. Azzurra's direct rivals, Quantum and Ran, were behind while Sled, which in the first two days was in the top part of the rankings, chose to sail further offshore, dropping to the back of the fleet. The rest of the fleet sailed together under the cliffs of Ibiza, in a breathtaking backdrop. In the approach to Tagomago, Azzurra attacked Gladiator with a tactical maneuver by the book and rounded the island in command. However, the surprises were just starting: in the cone of calm the whole fleet was in a stop-go mode. Provezza sailed closer to the coast of Ibiza and temporarily took the lead, Azzurra controlled Gladiator while Quantum opted to sail further offshore. However, Phoenix pulled the rabbit out of the hat and from the back of the fleet took advantage of the inshore breeze that had just formed. Azzurra kept her second position by controlling Provezza, third in today's race, while further back, Gladiator came in fourth.

The Zenith Royal Cup sees new boats that score good results, demonstrating once again that nothing should be taken for granted in the highly-competitive 52 Super Series.

Guillermo Parada, skipper of Azzurra, commented on the day: 'It was a good day for Azzurra and, more importantly, we are feeling increasingly confident with our boat speed. We have been making changes that seem to bear fruit and this motivates us to keep improving. We had a good race that got complicated halfway through at the island of Tagomago when we were leading and the breeze decided to play tricks on us. It died down, then came back, shifted 180 degrees, then 360 degrees, then died down again and so on. At the end, a boat that wasn't in the leading pack escaped by sailing close to shore and got ahead. We stay calm, we are in second place and managed to gain points against Ran, Quantum and Sled. Like I said yesterday, we will keep pushing in order to finish the event and the season in the highest position possible.'

Vasco Vascotto, tactician: 'It was a great race and we are happy! We had a second place that could have easily been a first, but that's fine. The breeze transition in the calm cone generated by the island of Tagomago was the typical situation in which anything could happen. We did well by staying calm and controlling the situation. A praise to the crew that carried out flawless maneuvers, constantly hoisting and dropping the jib and gennaker in order to exit the calm. Congratulations to Phoenix that came from behind and was able to take advantage of a new lane with inshore breeze. We are pleased to have found good boat speed again, we now climb to second place in the championship leaderboard and maybe we can dream of something more for the event in Ibiza.'

Racing resumes tomorrow with W/L races starting at 1pm CEST. As always, racing is streamed live with Virtual Eye and English commentary on Azzurra while real-time updates directly from the race course are posted on Azzurra's Facebook page and Twitter account.

Standings: ZENITH Royal Cup Marina Ibiza

Overall after six races
1 Quantum Racing, USA, (Doug De Vos USA) (1,2,3,2,1,6) 15pts
2 Azzurra, ITA, (Alberto Roemmers ARG) (3,5,2,1,6,2) 19pts
3 Rán Racing, SWE, (Niklas Zennström SWE) (2,4,4,4,5,7) 26pts
4 Sled, USA, (Takashi Okura JPN) (4,1,6,3,4,DNF/9) 27pts
5 Gaastra Pro, NED (Marc Blees NED) (6,6,1,8,2,5) 28pts
6 Gladiator, GBR, (Tony Langley GBR) (5,7,8,5,3,4) 32pts
7 Provezza 7, TUR, (Ergin Imre TUR) (7,3,7,6,7,3) 33pts
8 Phoenix, BRA, (Eduardo de Souza Ramos BRA) (8,8,5,7,8,1) 37pts

Overall Barclays 52 Super Series
1 Quantum 67pts
2 Azzurra 89pts
3 Ran Racing 92pts
4 Phoenix 114pts
5 Gladiator 134pts
6 Provezza 163pts