Giraglia Rolex Cup 2001 Maxis beat by 40 footers gain.

by Susanah Bourne on 30 Jun 2001 Querida won the Giraglia Rolex Cup on 23rd June, making it the second year
running that one of the smaller boats has won this prestigious trophy.

There was a bigger contingent than ever of 70 to 80-foot Racing Maxi
yachts, intent on winning the 49th edition of the 243-mile Giraglia Race,
the longest-running offshore race in the Mediterranean. But Gianluigi
Serena's Vismara 40 arrived from out of the blue to win the tricky race
from Saint-Tropez to Genoa in northern Italy. Whilst much of the fleet
struggled to negotiate the Giraglia rock in the fickle breezes off the
northern tip of Corsica, Querida and Imagine, an IMX-40, danced their way
through and found good winds all the way to the finish in Genoa.

Querida crewman, Fabrizio Toselli, did little to disguise his delight at
winning the Giraglia Rolex Cup at his first attempt. 'This is the best race
in the Mediterranean, and the most historic,' he said. 'Also, because I am
from Genoa it is particularly important for me to have won this race.'

It is the second year running that a smaller, amateur-crewed yacht has
stolen the big prize from under the noses of the bigger, professionally-run
boats. In 2000, the winner was Malandrino, a humble X-332 yacht,

Perhaps it was seeing a down-to-earth, ordinary sailor - Malandrino's owner
Enrico Panizza Piero - take the prize last year that inspired a record
entry of 122 boats for the Giraglia Rolex Cup 2001.

However, for the spectacular Maxi yachts that make the annual pilgrimage to
Saint-Tropez, the Giraglia Rolex Cup is fast becoming the Holy Grail of
racing trophies - highly desirable but seemingly unattainable.

Once again, the big boat owners and their professional crew had to look on
as Gianluigi Serena proudly stepped up to receive the trophy and a Rolex
Yacht-Master Rolesium timepiece at the prizegiving in the Yacht Club
Italiano, the oldest yacht club in Italy.

At least a Maxi took line honours. All too often for their liking, a lean
and hungry team of young racers has turned up with the latest in high-tech
Open 60 design and taken the one prize that really should be the domain of
the big boats. Whilst victory on corrected time is anyone's game, bigger
usually is better when it comes down to the plain old fight for reaching
the finish line first.

In recent years, Riviera di Rimini has hogged line honours, and indeed
holds the course record of 24 hours 7 minutes, which the Open 60 set in
blast-reaching conditions back in 1998. For 2001, there was no Riviera di
Rimini but in her stead a brand new 60-footer called Cometa. Perhaps the
most extreme boat ever entered in the race, she had the looks to suggest
she could do some damage in the right conditions.

And there was Grant Dalton and his brand new Volvo 60 Nautor Challenge. No
one knows offshore racing better than this Kiwi who has won round-the-world
races in multihulls and conventional keelboats. Whilst not the fastest boat
on paper, she would be immaculately sailed by the international crew of
professionals on board, a real threat to the biggest Maxis in the fleet.

But as the race unfolded, two boats mastered the fickle conditions around
Corsica better than the rest, the 85-foot Reichel-Pugh maxi called My Song,
and the brand new Reichel-Pugh 82-footer, Idea.

Bit by bit, these two mighty yachts eked out a huge lead over the fleet in
the long fetch to Genoa, and bit by bit the race-optimised Idea ground down
the slender lead held by the heavier cruiser/racer My Song.

In the dying moments of the race, Idea crept past My Song to take the
winner's gun by little more than two minutes, after almost 28 hours of
sailing.

The result was hugely disappointing for Pierluigi Loro Piana, the owner of
My Song, but a definite consolation for Raffaele Raiola. For the owner of
Idea, taking line honours in such dramatic fashion was just the tonic he
needed after suffering damage to his brand new yacht during the inshore
races at Saint-Tropez earlier in the week.

On the first day he saw a $40,000 lightwind headsail explode under
excessive pressure, and on the next day his multi-million dollar yacht ran
hard aground, thankfully with only minimal damage. Finally, it had all come
good when it mattered most for the Italian engineering and property tycoon.

'We were simply faster than My Song,' he said. 'Our guys worked harder and
everything on these boats is about how you work in combination. There was a
bit of luck too. The wind headed and we went through them.'

When the wind disappeared from the Mediterranean not long after the leaders
pulled into Genoa on Friday afternoon, it seemed the Maxi yachts would
dominate the rankings, while the rest of the fleet floundered on a glassy
sea. But although the wind was nowhere to be seen from the Italian
coastline, further out to sea the smaller yachts were hurtling down in
their own 25-knot breeze.

Querida, a custom-built Vismara 40, found wind nearly all the way from the
start in Saint-Tropez to the Giraglia Rock off the coast of Corsica. And
when some of the bigger boats got stuck in a windless zone within sight of
the finish at Genoa, Querida and a group of IMX-40s stormed down behind
them.

By Saturday morning it became apparent to the organisers at the Yacht Club
Italiano that no one was going to get close to the corrected times of
Querida and Imagine, an IMX-40 that also enjoyed conditions of almost
uninterrupted wind. In the end Gianluigi Serena and his crew on Querida
beat Gilles Argellies and the Imagine team by little more than two minutes
over a course that had taken them 36 hours.

Almost an hour behind these two was a group of three more IMX-40s, of which
the first was Fare Well, owned by Roger Pierrejean. Fare Well had been by
far and away the most consistent boat of the week. With a third place in
the Giraglia race to add to her 3,5,8 score in the inshore races off
Saint-Tropez, the Fare Well crew proved easy winners of the combined
series.

Other competitors were conquered by the fickle conditions. Fewer than half
of the 122 entrants completed the race, with many sailors frustrated by the
lack of wind. Most remarkably, the American Maxi Sagamore, which had held
the lead for some periods of the race and was in a solid third position
with 30 miles to go, decided to retire when she was only 11 miles from the
finish line. TV tycoon Jim Dolan had a plane to catch so was forced to
switch on the engine when he was frustratingly close to the finish.

A group of Maxi yachts hung on until the bitter end, but one by one they
sailed into the hole just miles from the finish. When the wind filled in
again, all four Maxis - Solleone, Virtuelle, Magic Carpet and Rrose Selavy
- moved in unison and crossed the line within a minute of each other. It
had been a frustrating few hours, to be sitting within sight of the finish
line for so long.

But to add insult to injury it was the 1975-vintage Grampus that stole
class honours in the big boats. The owner from Genoa, Carlo Puri Negri,
admitted he had been blessed with a favourable IMS rating in a 60-foot boat
that cost a fraction of the Maxi yachts he had so soundly beaten on
corrected time.

Whether through embarrassment at his recent successes or simply a desire to
go faster in a newer boat, the man who is part of the Pirelli dynasty has
decided to order a new Maxi for himself. He joked: 'I will be spending more
money and winning fewer trophies, but it is very Genovese to want to suffer
a little when things are going well.'

Second in Class 0 behind Grampus was the Volvo 60, a solid result for a
first competitive outing. 'I was impressed by the way our team combined on
tactics and decision-making. Dee Smith, Bouwe Bekking and Roger Nilson
worked very well together,' Dalton observed afterwards.

Remarkably, Dalton said the Giraglia Race would be the only competitive
outing f