Hugues Lepic’s Aleph Racing least inconsistent after day one of 44Cup Marstrand Worlds. Despite the relatively stable conditions it was an unusually high scoring day for all but Aleph Racing.
Winner of the last 2019 44Cup event in Rovinj, Croatia in May, the French team claimed the opening race after winning the start and making the most of the favourable left.
However in the next two races they had to fight back from poor starts. With no score worse than a fifth, Aleph Racing leads the World Championship after day one.
At the end of day one Aleph Racing holds a significant three point advantage over Vladimir Prosikhin’s Team Nika after which it is very close on the leaderboard with just three points separating the next five.
Aside from Aleph Racing, everyone else had very mixed days. For example Team Nika was penalised in race two for a failing to give room coming into the finish line and was forced to carry out a penalty turn.
But in fact they were already down the pan: “We were third around the top and then had an issue with the hoist and then we got rolled and gybed on and gybed on. We went from third to last…”
However Team Nika redeemed herself in the final race, pulling out a significant advantage by the top mark then extending as the 44Cup fleet ended day one with a finish line inside Marstrand Fjord.
It was a similar story for the overall 2019 44Cup leader, Igor Lah’s Team CEEREF.
In the first race, while passing the inner mark, the Slovenian RC44’s mainsail clashed with the rig on Tavatuy Sailing Team, holing CEEREF’s main and causing her to pick up one penalty point.
They had a similar deep result in race three when they were one of four boats pinned out to the left by Artemis Racing.
Yet she sandwiched these deep results with a win in race two, when all came good, winning the pin and the favoured left side of the first beat – a duct tape-repaired mainsail clearly still fast.
Punching above her weight for a team that only raced on the 44Cup for the first time in Marstrand a year ago was Pavel Kuznetsov’s Tavatuy Sailing Team, ending the day third. She came home second in today’s second race, following similar ‘left is best’ tactics to Team CEEREF.
44Cup Marstrand Worlds – Day 1 after 3 races
1st Aleph Racing (17) Hugues Lepic – – 10 pts
2nd Team Nika (10) Vladimir Prosikhin – – 13 pts
3rd Tavatuy Sailing Team (21) Pavel Kuznetsov – – 14 pts
4th Team Aqua (25) Chris Bake – – 14 pts
5th Bronenosec Sailing Team (18) V. Liubomirov & K. Frolov – – 15 pts
6th Peninsula Petroleum (22) John Bassadone – – 16 pts
7th Artemis Racing (26) Torbjörn Törnqvist – – 17 pts
8th Team CEEREF (11) Igor Lah – – 18 pts
9th Charisma (15) Nico Poons – – 19 pts
