Desafío wins Trofeu Quebramar-Chrysler

by International GP42 Association on 31 Aug 2008 Unfortunately, the dense fog that covered the Cascais bay from the wee hours of the day didn’t dissipate early enough in order to allow racing to be held on the third and closing day of the 8th Trofeu Quebramar-Chrysler. The race committee waited till the last second of the 3:30pm deadline but to no avail.

Desafío clearly wins this 5th event of the Quebramar Cup, with four victories in 5 races. To say that the Spanish team was consistent would be an understatement. Even after crossing the line early and making a penalty turn, the boat helmed by Laureano Wizner was able to win races.

Italian AIRIS was second, showing enough consistency reaching also second place in the overall Quebramar Cup leaderboard. On the other hand, MADRID, the Spanish boat skippered by Jose Maria van der Ploeg, achieved its best result ever this season by grabbing 3rd place. Gustavo Lima, the Portuguese sailor that called tactics in this event, proved to be an invaluable addition to the crew.

On the overall QUEBRAMAR Cup score table, Desafío managed to increase its lead and now has an 18-point advantage over 2nd placed AIRIS that is now clear of 3rd placed Near Miss.

The grand final of the Quebramar Cup will be the Trofeo Cesar Manrique, taking place in Puerto Calero, from October 16 to 18.

Santi López-Vázquez, tactician of Desafío, winner of Trofeu Quebramar-Chrysler: Consistency and regularity was the key to winning this regatta. We had 4 victories and we were always within the top five at every mark. We clearly showed that under these light-medium conditions we are sufficiently fast and we don’t commit errors we can be at the top. On the other hand, our competitors committed mistakes and we took advantage of them, especially in a day like yesterday. We have also further improved crew work and are able to successfully handle all situations, except maybe a couple of starts, but we were then able to recover our way through the race.

Cesare Bressan, team manager of AIRIS, 2nd placed: Desafío deserves its victory in this regatta and the overall leadership in the Quebramar Cup. We are obviously happy with the second place but we still are disappointed we failed to take advantage of our potential both in Valencia as well as in Palma. We will try to defend our overall position and why not win the last event of the season.

José M'Van der Ploeg, owner of Madrid, 3rd placed: We are very happy with the result we achieved in this event. We get to learn the boat better every day, we are solving the speed problems and this makes us climb positions but we still have one remaining problem, that is consistency, a key for this class. We still have a long way to go, it’s a question of team work and self-confidence and we hope it will be solved when we feel surer about what we can achieve. It’s a gradual process that we hope to finish as soon as possible, as do our sponsors.

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