MOMO's winning run broken

A broken spinnaker halyard on the first run of the first race today may have cost Dieter Schön’s Momo team their perfect scoreline, but as they then bounced back to win their fourth race from five starts, the German flagged team pass the midpoint of the 36 Copa del Rey MAPFRE today holding a lead of five points.

Behind Momo the battle for second place in the Maxi 72 fleet is very close. After five races there are just two points between second placed Cannonball, the Botin design of Italian owner-driver Dario Ferrari and fourth placed Bella Mente of Hap Fauth.

In the first race today on the Bay of Palma it was George Sakellaris’ Proteus, with tactician Tommaso Chieffi, which lead at the windward mark, just a few metres ahead of Momo when the class leaders’ kite halyard failed and dropped the sail into the water. Although they recovered the sail quickly and attached a new halyard they dropped to fourth.

In fact in the four boat class there is no change to Momo’s lead after Wednesday, the third racing day of six. All of the Maxi 72 crews scored five points apiece – Momo going 4-1 and Proteus 1-4 and both Cannonball and Bella Mente trading seconds and thirds.

Proteus’ Chieffi reported, “It is so close. The boats are so close it is about how you execute the start and the first shift. The track is one sided today, very left. But the race committee did a good job adding some advantage to the starboard end and so it evens out when you get to the corner. We had a good start first race on the right towards the boat and held off Momo to the layline and then squeezed in front. Momo has done well so far but there is still a long way to go, we are just at half way in the championship. They looked launched for the moment.”

In the ClubSwan 50 Class there was a first win ever for Skorpios, all the more remarkable considering that the Russian helmswoman is still very much a newcomer to sailing who has done less than 40 hours of helming. Coached by tactician Ekaterina Skudina, three times Olympian and European champion in the Yngling, the team have two Swan 50s on the Greek island of Skorpios, the team have local Palma ace Nacho Postigo as navigator. They won the first race and finished sixth in the second race to lie just one point behind Leonardo Ferragamo’s Cuordileone which is second. Hendrik Brandis’ Earlybird leads by ten points, winning three races so far including the second contest today.

Skudina said “Our skipper is very talented but has only done 30 hours on the water so far. So Daria was doing well steering, she is learning fast. She can feel the boat and is very concentrated. We learn fast. We started with the Swan 50 so to win today we are very very happy. I honestly believe they will be perfect skippers in due course. They have talent. We have a nice situation, we have two Swan 50s based in Greece at Skorpios island but we don’t do that much practice because the crew are busy. We had some days in June and three days before this regatta. We need to take it easy and be patient though there are no miracles in life.”

Christian Plump’s Elena Nova leads the MRW Swan 45 class after a 1,2 today but they are just one point clear of a team from Ecuador who are racing their first ever Copa del Rey MAPFRE on the chartered Negra with Azzurra’s Argentinian coach Guillermo Baquerizas.

Their skipper Andres Rizzo explained: “We are a family team, my brother, my father two colleagues from my office and so we have other crew from our team in Ecuador plus our Argentinian tactician Guillermo Baquerizas. It took us the first day to learn the boat. We brought our sails from our Swan 45 in Salinas Ecuador. We are training to race the Galapagos Cup in Ecuador. My father has been a sailor his whole life and he is now 76 and sails with us here some times. Conditions, the heat and the winds, are quite like what we have at home. We mostly have 10-12kts. The wind was changing a lot today. We seemed to start in good wind and then it drops. And there seemed to be different winds all the time. Conditions do seem to change all the time. We came here hoping to finish on the podium.”

It was the first day of racing for the GC32 foiling catamarans which managed two races. Erik Maris’ Zoulou come out on top after two rounds of the ANONIMO Speed Challenge, recording an average speed of 21.78 knots on the 0.72 mile reaching course. Tricky conditions allowed only occasional full flying for the GC32s and two races to be held. These were won by Simon Delzoppo’s new .film Racing team from Australia and the Jerome Clerc-skippered Realteam, which leads overall, but tied on points with the Japanese team Mamma Aiuto! and Sebastien Rogues’ Team ENGIE from France.

In the Mallorca Sotheby’s IRC class, Andy Soriano’s crack team on Alegre are increasing the pressure on fleet leaders Team Vision Future. Soriano’s crew went 1,3 today and are now only one point behind the French crew of Jean Jacques Chaubard which won the second race today but faltered with a seventh in the first race. Alegre’s Kiwi tactician Kelvin Harrap commented, “We owe the French team who are leading a couple of minutes in an hour so some of the time we are fighting it out with Phoenix for second. But we are closing the leaders down slowly and I think it will be all on in the next three days. The class is great here, it is good coming from the Super Series but a different style of racing but good fun and long days on the water.”

In the BMW ORC 1 class the Spanish Navy’s Aifos still lead overall with the King Felipe VI skippering the Corel 45 to a fourth, leading the class by ten points. The King has yet to win the Copa del Rey MAPFRE which was won five times by his father Juan Carlos. The Rodman 42 Maverta won twice today and leads the BMW ORC 2 class, BMW ORC 3 did not get a race today and in Herbalife J80 class there is a tie at the top of the leaderboard now between Les Roches team and Bribon Movistar.

All of the class leaders were awarded the Enlace Red Eléctrica trophy for leading their fleet through the midpoint of the six day regatta. The fleets return to windward-leeward racing Thursday.


Results. Day 3
(Position/Boat/Country/Skipper/Results/Points)

BMW ORC 1
1. Aifos (ESP), S.M. El Rey Felipe VI, 2+3+6+3+4=18
2. Adrian Hoteles Macaronesia (NED), Daniel Adrián Rueira, 1+9+13+2+3=28
3. Maserati (ESP), Fernando León, 13+2+7+7+6=35
… up to 35 entries.

BMW ORC 2
1. Maverta (ESP), Jose Ballester, 3+2+1+1=7
2. Kundaka – Elite Sails (ESP), José Coello, 8+3+2+2=15
3. Sum Innovation (ESP), Pedro Campos, 6+1+3+6=16
… up to 21 entries.

BMW ORC 3
1. Grupo Ceres (ESP), Daniel Cuevas, 4+1+1=6
2. Just the Job (GBR), Scott Beattie, 1+4+4=9
3. Lanzarote Sailing Paradise (ESP), Alejandro Morales, 3+3+3=9
… up to 9 entries.

Maxi 72
1. Momo (IVB), Dieter Schon, 1+1+1+4+1=8
2. Cannonball (ITA), Dario Ferrari, 3+2+3+3+2=13
3. Proteus (USA), George Sakellaris, 2+3+4+1+4=14
4. Bella Mente (USA), Alex Roepers, 4+4+2+2+3=15

Club Swan 50
1. Earlybird (GER), Hendrik Brandis, 1+1+3+2+1=8
2. Cuordileone (ITA), Leonardo Ferragamo, 5+5+1+5+2=18
3. Skorpios (RUS), Andrey Konogorov, 3+3+6+1+6=19
… up to 6 entries.

MRW Swan 45
1. Elena Nova (GER), Christian Plump, 5+7+1+1+2=16
2. Negra (ECU), Francisco Rizzo, 6+1+2+2+6=17
3. Automotions (NED), Lennard Van Oeveren, 4+4+5+3+3=19
… up to 8 entries.

Swan 42
1. Pez de Abril (ESP), José María Meseguer, 1+2+3+1=7
2. Nadir (ESP), Pedro Vaquer Comas, 2+1+4+4=11
3. Red Eléctrica de España (ESP), Alberto Viejo Puga, 7+3+1+2=13
… up to 9 entries.

Mallorca Sotheby´s IRC
1. Team Vision Future (SUI), Mergui Mikael, 1+4+1+7+1=14
2. Alegre (GBR), Andrés Soriano, 7+1+3+1+3=15
3. Phoenix (USA), Hasso Plattner, 5+2+4+2+4=17
… up to 16 entries.

Herbalife J80
1. Les Roches Jeunesse Marbella Team (ESP), Eric Brezellec, 2+1+1+6=10
2. Bribon Movistar (ESP), Marc de Antonio, 1+2+4+3=10
3. Grupo Garatu (ESP), Iker Almanoz, 4+7+5+1=17

(Race Report: Copa del Rey Press Officers)

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