Highly competitive fleet of 11 teams ready for the 52 Super Series

by Azzurra on 24 May 2016 The boat that’s the sporting symbol of the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda is defending champion in the 52 Super Series set to start on May 25th. She will be racing in a highly competitive fleet of eleven teams.

The Tuscan archipelago will be the backdrop for the first event in the 52 Super Series, the most professional and competitive championship for keelboats today. The championship will start tomorrow with the first event held at Marina di Scarlino, in Maremma, Tuscany. Eleven highly competitive teams will be racing in the 2016 season that will be even harder fought than before.

Last year Azzurra won the TP52 World Championship and the 52 Super Series handily but knows how hard her competitors have trained to narrow their performance gap. The circuit will be hard fought: the American team Quantum, the Russian team Bronenosec, the Swedes aboard Ran, the Germans on Platoon, the Turkish boat Provezza and the English boats Alegre and Gladiator- all will be tough competition for the defending champion: Azzurra.

At the test event PalmaVela, Azzurra was second behind Quantum and just in front of Bronenosec, but the real racing begins at 1:00 PM tomorrow, May 25th when the official 2016 52 Super Series season will start.

Quotes of the day:

Guillermo Parada, skipper: “We are really happy and fortunate to be here. We have the same team as last year and the boat is in good shape. We think that we’ve improved the boat and covered every detail we wanted to so we are excited and looking forward to seeing where we stand, and hoping to have a good regatta. We know that Quantum changed three guys from the boat and they optimized it by changing the rudder and the bowsprit so it’ll be interesting to see how those changes effect their performance. Hopefully we can control not only them but also the rest of the fleet and have a good regatta. The differences between the boats are marginal, so it’ll be a tight regatta that will probably only be decided at the end of the week.”

Vasco Vascotto, tactician: “This year’s championship is going to be even harder than last year’s, there are lots of competitive boats and we are all keeping an eye on each other. We have trained and prepared the boat to be in top form from day one thanks to support from our two coaches: Guillermo Baquerizas and Marco Capitani, both of whom give our team an added edge and a real advantage. Last but not least I want to thank everyone who has provided so well for us and has given us everything we need to perform at our best.'

Racing will end on Sunday, May 29th and the event will include both windward/leeward races and a coastal race scheduled, for now, for Friday. The past two days have had very unstable weather and strong winds, but the rest of the week should have moderate winds from the southwest.