At this halfway stage of the 44Cup Cascais, Chris Bake’s Team Aqua has joined Nico Poons’ Charisma at the top of the leaderboard with two days of racing to go off the Portuguese sailing mecca.
In the first race, Hugues Lepic’s Aleph Racing nosed out in front after claiming the inside overlap on Torbjörn Törnqvist’s Artemis Racing rounding the top mark. From here the French team forged ahead to claim the first race of the day, just as they did yesterday (ultimately they would be top scoring boat of the day).
In the subsequent race, Team Nika attempted to pull off a similar manoeuvre on the inside at the top mark, but in their case were just too slow.
This enabled Team Aqua to sail around the outside of them and go on to follow Aleph Racing in taking their second bullet of the regatta.
The most dramatic turnaround of fortune occurred in the day’s third and final race. The left finally came good for 44Cup newbies, Pavel Kuznetsov’s Tavatuy Sailing Team. Coming back from the left, the team from central Russia crossed ahead of the starboard tackers to lead comfortably around the top mark.
Those astern of second-placed Team Aqua were held up by Bronenosec Sailing Team which had parked up coming into the mark. With Tavatuy Sailing Team cruising home to victory.
44Cup Cascais – Scores after 6 races
1st Team Aqua (25) Chris Bake – – 17 pts
2nd Charisma (15) Nico Poons – – 17 pts
3rd Aleph Racing (17) Hugues Lepic – – 19 pts
4th Team Nika (10) Vladimir Prosikhin – – 28 pts
5th Tavatuy Sailing Team (21) Pavel Kuznetsov – – 36 pts
6th Artemis Racing (26) Torbjörn Törnqvist – – 36 pts
7th Bronenosec Sailing Team (18) V. Liubomirov & K. Frolov – – 36 pts
8th Peninsula Petroleum (22) John Bassadone – – 38 pts
9th Team CEEREF (11) Igor Lah – – 43 pts