Porto Cervo, 16th September 1999

Highlights

Offshore finishes in strong north-easterly, after crews experience wind direction from every point of the compass.
Brava wins big boat class to take overall lead from Innovision 7 (fourth in offshore).
Winterthur Yah Man hangs onto overall lead in middle boat class, despite third place in offshore.
Only half of small boat fleet finishes, and Drake moves a point ahead of sistership Malinda Clarion.
Crews rest and maintenance work begins.

THE INSIDE STORY - Low Pressure Torment

The first of the Rolex IMS Offshore World Championship fleet, the ILC Maxi Alexia, completed the one hundred and twenty mile offshore course at 05.21 this morning. Alberto Roemmers' boat was only fifty minutes ahead of the Judel/Vrolijk 49, Yannis Costopoulos' Okyalos X. It was an excellent performance from the Greek team that secured them second place in the division. But the honours went to Pasquale Landolfi's Brava, just over a minute behind Okyalos X, and correcting out to a two and a half minute win. But as the rest of the division poured over the line behind Brava - last to finish Merit Cup was only thirteen minutes astern - Alexia found themselves relegated to seventh place. It was an impressive comeback from the Brava team, who pulled it out of the bag in the last few miles, after an indifferent start allowed rivals Innovision 7 to get a jump on them.

Chris Larson, Brava Q8's tactician, commented that, 'It was a race of landmines. A race of patience. We stuck with it, tried to keep within striking distance. And we were lucky that when we went into the final parking lot, we came out on the fortunate end of it.' Innovision's Dee Smith was disappointed, 'We had the good start and first beat, it was all looking good. It was late on when Brava Q8 got back into it ... they got almost all their time in just a couple of miles ... got the pressure when we didn't and were almost a mile ahead by the time we got to the final rounding mark.'

Conditions always made a comeback possible - this race was anything except a straight-line boatspeed test. The centre of a low pressure system has been drifting roughly west to east, across the race course, in the last twenty four hours. With the winds circulating tightly around the centre in an anti-clockwise direction, a small movement of the fleet relative to the low pressure system, meant big changes in wind direction. Get to the north of the centre and there are easterly winds, get to the south of the centre and there are westerly's. Unfortunately, it hasn't even been that simple. Into the mix has gone the frontal activity that generated yesterday's venomous squall, and the complex land and thermal effects that the Costa Smeralda's pretty, but elaborate, coastline produces. Ian Moore, navigator aboard Winterthur Yah-Man, commented, 'We've had wind from every conceivable direction, from forty knots to two knots. Every single sail has been up, all the kites, wind-seeker, jib-top - the lot.'

In such conditions, it might be expected that big gaps would open between the boats. But it seems that much of what the weather gods gave, they promptly took away again - gains became losses with bewildering rapidity. Racing in a tight pack, the pressure was on all the way to the finish. First of the middle boat fleet home, and winner on corrected time, was Wolfgang Schafer's Struntje Light.

Paul Anderson and Italian Admiral's Cup Team Captain, Bruno Finzi, are sailing with the German boat. They felt they had taken a small gain out of the first squall yesterday, which had been extended by keeping in phase with the wind shifts as they gybed down the passage between La Maddalena and the Sardinian coast. A second squall hit shortly after rounding the Ecueil de Lavezzi, and Struntje Light slipped away in the light airs that followed it. But with darkness, and the wind still spinning round the dial, they had seen the green and red bow lights of the fleet catch them again, as they parked up under the offshore islands south of Porto Cervo. 'It was,' said Bruno, 'the arrival of the north-easterly - which we got first - that saved us. This wind was completely unforecast.' he added, 'We kept expecting the westerly.' The low pressure which has been tormenting the Rolex fleet for the last twenty four hours, seems finally to have moved away to the south-east. The sun has returned, and the Costa Smeralda is once again its benign and elegant self.
Written by Mark Chisnell, for The Strategic Organisation