With its light start, brilliant sunshine and the ancient town of Piran and the still snowcapped Slovenian Alps as a backdrop, the day could not have been better for the 44Cup fleet, to blow away the cobwebs after such a long absence due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Having not lined up since November 2019, 44Cup racing resumed today for the high performance owner-driver one designs, with three races successfully held on the Bay of Piran. These started in 6 knots and built to 12 over the afternoon.
The 44Cup Portorož is being hosted by Vladimir Prosikhin and Igor Lah, owners of Team Nika and Team CEEREF respectively. Team CEEREF is the 44Cup’s Slovenian flagged RC44 while two key crew on board Team Nika once represented Slovenia in the Olympic Games, come from Portorož and one, Mitja Margon, is this event’s organiser. It was thus appropriate that these two RC44s won the first two races. Team Nika posted by far the most consistent results today, coming ashore with a four point lead while behind her the competition is far closer with just four points separating second from seventh places.
Team Nika’s performance looked set to have been even better until the final beat of the final race when they were leading, but were forced to tack away from starboard tackers on two occasions. This caused Pavel Kuznetsov’s Atom Tavatuy to take the lead at the final top mark rounding only for the Russian team to get pipped at the post by Hugues Lepic’s Team Aleph.
Racing resumes tomorrow with stronger winds forecast.
TV broadcasters: ICARUS Sports’ output from the 44Cup Portorož Day 1 will be uploaded on ICARUS Sports SERVER on 20th – 24th of May:
VNR SHOTLIST:
00:00 – 00:09: Location
00:10 – 00:23: Fleet Racing
00:24 – 00:40: Team Nika (RUS)
00:41 – 01:01: Team CEEREF (SLO)
01:02 – 01:06: Fleet Racing
01:07 – 01:22: Aleph Racing (FRA)
