A bitter rise in pressure for Team Engie at GC32 Malcesine Cup 2016

by Sébastien Rogues on 11 Jul 2016 Sébastien Rogues and his Team Engie crew have faced ever improving competition at the second meeting of the GC32 Racing Tour season. Following nine intense races out of the initially planned 20, and numerous changes to the leaderboard, Team Engie finished eighth overall.

The amount of experience the top teams have is evident and Team Engie will have to work on certain areas of their sailing skills in order to climb up the few points on the leaderboard that separate them from the first half of the fleet.

Racing hydofoiling GC32 catamarans requires sailors to have expert boat handling skills and faultless coordination. Following a tough first day, Sébastien Rogues, Gurvan Bontemps, Christophe Carbonnières, Jean Baptiste Gellée and Antoine Joubert settled in to their racing and managed to achieve better results.

A slightly disappointed Sébastien Rogues went on to say: “We struggled on the first few races. We haven’t had as much practice as the teams who spent a week here before the competition, using the time to get a full measure of the race area and to get into perfect sync with the boat. The second event of the season was like half an event as we only raced two out of four days. Unfortunately our improving results were put to a stop following a collision with REALTEAM (Switzerland), for which we were heavily penalised with a disqualification at a key moment. The next two days were cancelled. Weather conditions got in the way of racing, which was finally cancelled by the race committee. The same went for the last day of racing but this time it was a class decision.”

With just nine races out of the 20 planned it was effectively tough for Team Engie to make up ground. More accustomed to a mid-table level, finishing in the bottom half of the fleet, the team morale is not great. They do however leave more determined than ever, focusing on the next stage in Palma (Spain).

“We do have the means to be in the top five and I don’t say it enough times, we’re very fortunate to be sailing with the worlds elite foiling catamaran sailors. I must above all thank our technical team who have allowed us to get back to foiling the day after our collision.” These few words given by Sébastien Rogues prove just how determined he is and thankful towards his dedicated technical shore crew.

Overall standings after the GC32 Malcesine Cup
1 - Team Tilt, 18 points
2 - Norauto, 19 points
3 - Gunvor Sailing, 86 points
4 - Argo, 40 points
5 - Malzia, 46 points
6 - Armin Strom Sailing Team, 60 points
7 – Mamma Aiuto, 64 points
8 - Team Engie, 67 points
9 – Realteam, 77 points
10 - Orange Racing, 79 points