Game on and wind up on Day 1 of the WMRT Cape Crow Cup

by World Match Racing Tour on 23 Sep 2016 The Swedish west coast weather provided both sun and misty rain on the first day of the WMRT Cape Crow Cup. A nice south-westerly breeze created a racecourse that was fully powered up and allowed for both passing lanes and tricky decisions. The light winds from beginning of the week were long-gone and the teams needed to prove their worth with their boat handling.

One team that had had a good nights sleep was David Gilmour’s (AUS) who today were lighting up the results board with bullets all the way through. Gilmour really seemed to enjoy the stronger breeze and powered through his races in great form today. Another team that had a tough start to the week but came thundering back was the fleets’ elder-man Hans Wallén (SWE). “I’m happy to get Julius Hallström (SWE) back on the boat and the team work between me and Keith Swinton (AUS) is improving match by match. We had a bit of bad luck with the calls going the wrong way in the beginning of the week, now the margins are more on our side.” said a relieved Wallén after a long day with a lot of hard matches on the water. Gilmour is sitting on seven wins and Wallén on six at the end of day one.

Trailing Gilmour and Wallén are the two winners from Sopot, Torvar Mirsky (AUS) and Nicklas Dackhammar (SWE), both on four points each. Dackhammar, who’s been known to sail the M32 really quickly, fell short in a couple of matches due to errors not usually to seen by Essiq Racing Team. Mirsky, who is sailing with Max Salminen (SWE), Allan Nørregaard (DEN) from the West Coast Cup and Damien Garbowski (AUS) still needs to gel the team together in order to challenge for the top. The event is far from decided though, with a full round robin to complete before the Semi Finals and Finals.

Lingering at the bottom of the scoresheet is Måns Holmberg (SWE) who seems to have lost his power from earlier this week. Sailing with two new crew members and missing the speed needed to push the teams at the front, there will be plenty to talk about at the debrief for Typhoon X.

Another team that has been sailing well but complicated things too much is Joachim Aschenbrenner (DEN). They looked fast, won starts as well as tactical situations but instead of simplifying and taking the gains, they seemed to make one manoeuvre too many, loosing the lead and with it the match. If they can brush aside today’s results they may very well be able to turn things around over the coming two days.

Racing continues tomorrow with the last matches of round robin one and the start of round robin two.