ISAF World Sailing Cup Palma - Breeze and sunshine on practice day
by Jedda Murphy on 1 Apr 2013
Practice Race - Trofeo Princesa Sofia Mapfre 2013 Sail-World.com
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ISAF World Sailing Cup Palma - The clock moved forward overnight in Europe. Seems rather like the starting gun for the Olympic Class regatta season. It was a 15 to 17 knot breeze this morning, overcast but it burnt off.
Some classes took the practice race seriously, others not.
The squad depth from Spain, France, Italy and Germany is very significant at this regatta.
The Finns had been out for much of the morning and most had returned to Harbour before Practice Race start time of 1400.
The 470's sailed a mixed fleet with both men and women’s divisions on the one line.
The 49er's had a big line up, of at least 40 boats, one of the German boats were two lengths ahead of the line with 10 seconds to go and they sucked a big slab of the fleet OCS, when the general recall horn sounded, almost the entire fleet kept sailing. A few of the back markers cut the corner and started above the starting vessel.
With 15-17 knots of breeze on the start line the 49er FX class had a few boat handling issues illustrating the rawness of the fleet.
The Nacra 17's had a big variation in speed across the fleet. After the practice race was completed the wind had dropped down to 10 to 12 knots. There was sunshine across the course areas and many of the crews took advantage of the benign conditions, the best it had been in the last three days, to stay in the water for an extended training session.
Tomorrow, Monday, is the first day of competition. Racing starts at 11:00 local time in Palma de Mallorca across five course areas on The Bay of Palma.
Practice Day highlights in English:
Practice Day highlights in Spanish:
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