Sailing World on Water April 07.23 Biotherm-Damage Fire-Fix, AM Magic Capsize, Princess Sofia, ETNZ

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Highlights of what happened globally in the sport of sailing in the last 7 days.
Boris Herrmann saw what a long leg 3 was, in The Ocean Race, and he had his Imoca designed for the gruelling Southern Ocean, and he was successful, as he and his great crew, won the leg from Cape Town to Itaijai. Despite fixing their mast, and sails, along with Rosies’ accident,, they screamed over the leg, giving us some fantastic footage. Congratulations to the team for an epic sail.

This is your weekly Sailing Highlights show, the World on Water for April 07, 2023.

Speaking afterwards, Lucas Calabrese offered a brilliant insight into just how cool the American Magic team is, and talking about the capsize, he almost made it sound fun:, “Yeah, obviously it’s pretty challenging, you have the bustle that is hanging down on the boat, and then you have the foil that is coming in and out of the waves, so it’s hard to manage the balance between keeping the bustle out of the water, and the foil not coming out of the water. It was just one of those days, pretty tough conditions and, we stuffed the bow, and then got slow, and ended up in a pretty fun capsize.”

The 52nd edition of the Tro-feo Princesa Sofía has a special importance just over a year before the Games of the 33rd Olympiad begin in Paris. The best Olympic sailing specialists in the world met on the Bay of Palma as a taste of what may happen at the French regatta off Marseille. This is World Sailings’ report on Day One in Palma.

Now it’s Biotherms’ turn to experience damage. They hit something with their foil, and it caused the team to take it seriously. They fixed the damage inside the IMOCA with a repair which included a huge fire! Not something you see every day on a racing yacht.

In one day the wind managed to turn around an entire 360 degrees making it very difficult for the race committee to place a course in the bay of Palma de Mallorca for the iQFoils.

Still in Palma, the wind came in for Day Two, and the 49er, and 49er FX, where in the Mens, was dominated by the French, and the womens FX, by New Zealand. That’s the diversity of talent in these divisions leading up to the Paris Olympics.

An unspecified and highly unusual below-decks gear breakage curtailed Emirates Team New Zealand’s second day of training this week aboard ‘Te Re-hu-tai’ in Auckland on Tuesday. Simon van Velthooven, one of the super-fit power group of Emirates Team New Zealand, summed it up brilliantly after sailing saying: “Yeah we’re starting to throw it around a bit more now, and probably the G-forces feel like it was pre-racing here in Auckland.

The New Zealand Sailing team are having a good meet in Palma at the Princess Sofia regatta and Olympic Ilca Coach, Jon Emmett, talked to Luke Deegan who is heading the ILCA 7’s.

Running a close third with a badly torn Mainsail, the crew on 11th Hour Racing in The Ocean Race, are down to the last of their clean clothes. Navigator Simon Fisher has opened his last T shirt and, at the time, he was 300 miles from the finish. The laundry list in Itajai will be long.