The British Team – The Spitfires – skippered by Ian Williams, faced Denmark, Malysia and France in Fleet 1 of the SSL Gold Cup 1/4 Finals in Gran Canaria.
Day 1 was a light wind affair with poor starts being especially punished, as there were few ways back in the disturbed air.
From the start the British slowly but surely asserted themselves, with some tight racing against the French ‘Bleus’ and the Malaysian ‘Monsoon’ teams.
Timing their approach to the windward mark to perfection they took an 18 second lead over France with MAlaysia a further 15 seconds back, and Denmark unable to get back in the pack after their poor start.
The British team built their lead to over a minute downwind, winning by 58 seconds ahead of Malysia.
France gained on the second upwind leg, with the Danes last over 3 minutes behind
Nic Asher, Tactician for British was pleased with the start to their SSL Gold Cup campaign:
“I’ve watched some of the racing on Youtube, and it has been close. Today there were some quite big shifts and holes, so I’m not surprised the fleet spread out. It was pretty tricky.”
In Fleet 2 – The Hungarian ‘Shamans’, surged ahead of the fleet in the first leg, rounding the windward mark a full 101 seconds ahead of Chile in second.
Chile’s ‘Finis Terrae Sailors’ – in their thirteenth race of the competition – threw a tight tack on The Netherlands soon after the start.
At the finish Hungary took an easy win ahead of the Dutch, with Chile third and Germany fourth.
Fleet 3 – The Australian ‘Roos’ and Portugal’s ‘Navigators’ battled it out for the lead over the final lap, with gains and losses as they fell in and out of the zephyrs of pressure.
The final few hundred metres to the finish line was so tense, with the wind falling to a whisper, but the Australians took it out to the port layline, and by avoiding manoeuvres kept the boatspeed up to finish 28 seconds ahead of Portugal.
Brazil were nearly 2 minutes behind the leader, but held off New Zealand to finish third.
Fleet 4 – After a long wait for the breeze, Fleet 4 had a sunset race in a few knots of patchy breeze. In a picture-perfect start, albeit in slow motion, the fleet was finally away.
The early leaders were the Italian ‘Gladiators’ with 27-time World Champion Vasco Vascotto calling the shots like an orchestra conductor, pulled out a huge lead at the windward mark and through to the finish.
The Spanish eventually took second, ahead of the Swiss and finally the Lithuanian ‘The Ambers’.
There are three more days of racing this round to decide the eight teams to go forward to the semi-finals.
The British quarter final team is: Ian Williams, Nic Aisher, Elliot Willis, Matt Cornwell, Pete Cummings, Luke Patience, Aaron Cooper, Freya Black, Phil Clapp and James Dodd.
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