Day 4 Coastal Race at Maxi 72 Rolex Worlds (Photo Credit: Rolex / Carlo Borlenghi)
Bella Mente Racing currently holds the class lead for the Rolex Maxi 72 World Championship, and although only one more day of racing remains, the battle is far from over, with Robertissima III and Momo at the team’s heels in second and third place, respectively.
Today, the fleet experienced trying conditions in the event’s coastal race off Porto Cervo, with just whispers of breeze following them around the already tactically-challenging course; Bella Mente took second place.
Mike Sanderson:
The coastal races at this regatta are always very tough – with lots of islands, lots of rocks and many short legs – so plenty of sail changes are to be expected, but today was a full ‘jungle ball’ as we call it with the becalmed conditions resulting in even more changes than usual. The fact that we only saw between six and ten knots on the racecourse, but had the boat set up for the forecasted breeze of 13-20 knots wasn’t ideal either.
However, we came away from the race with an awesome second-place finish. To come out of this event with a 1,2 in the two coastal races is fantastic and keeps us in the hunt going into Saturday. However, there is still a lot to play for so we just need to keep doing what we’re doing.
Terry Hutchinson:
This was by far the hardest coastal race I have ever done in Porto Cervo, primarily because we all knew that we had a lot at stake with today being a determining factor in our overall standing in the championship. There wasn’t an easy moment at point on the course, with the team performing about 20 sail changes and experiencing a couple of parking-lot moments throughout.
Once again, Hap, Soapy (Ian Moore), and Doogie (Sean Couvreux) executed a good mid-line start, and from there we kept chipping away. The bow team – Doogie, Mickey (Michele Cannoni) and Pete (Henderson) – did great work through every sail change. It was great to have that type of reliability, and while we did not get everything right tactically, we were always asking the question to Robertissima III, which executed a very good race.
We go into Saturday with the opportunity to be successful. At this point, that is all we can ask.
After tomorrow’s layday, Bella Mente Racing will take to the water again on Saturday for two windward leeward races to wrap up the regatta.
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