For the first 44Cup event in 17 months, Portorož could not have offered better conditions to date, slowly ramping up the wind strength to the third and penultimate day of the Slovenia stopover when the wind was at times solidly into the early 20s and gusting to 25 knots.
While Chris Bake’s Team Aqua was the undisputed champion yesterday, first home in all three races, today reverted to familiar 44Cup form with three different winners. In the first race John Bassadone’s Gibraltar team on their rebranded Peninsula Racing finally joined the dots up the race course to lead at the top mark, clinging on to the finish.
Team Aqua once again showed the fleet the way around the race track in the second race, to score their fourth bullet in five races.
Finally after an outstanding opening day, followed by a dire day two, when they seemed to be lacking speed and luck, Vladimir Prosikhin’s Team Nika came good in the big conditions to win today’s final race.
But today was less about winning races. In fact neither of the two top scoring teams won a race today but otherwise maintained superb consistency. Local Slovenian hero Igor Lah, had the best day across the eight boat fleet posting a 2-4-2 and was regularly nipping at the heels of the leader. The same was true of Pavel Kuznetsov’s Atom Tavatuy with an equally level headed 3-3-4. As a result these boats have now moved up to second and third places overall behind Team Aqua.
Tomorrow is the final day of the 44Cup Portorož and three races are scheduled in similar conditions to today. The day will kick off with the top five RC44s still within six points. As a result who will win and who will make the podium remains wide open – familiar 44Cup territory.
Photo Credits: 44Cup
