Cristabella leads TP52's in first day of PalmaVela

The race started sharply at 12:00 hours for the Transpac 52. Ten units crossed the starting line in this first race of the Hublot PalmaVela, a 30 nautical miles coastal course, with a light breeze from the land, NE, 9 knots. Peter de Riffer’s Mean Machine-Valle Romano led the fleet at the windward mark followed by Adrian Stead’s Stay Calm and John Coumantaros’s Bambakou. Sailing downwind to the island of Sech, next point of the coastal course, British boat Stay Calm took the first place, while the wind shifted to the right and wind speed began to drop. When beginning to round the island of Sech there was hardly a 2-3 knots breeze shortening the distances between boats. And this brought changes in the mark rounding with Mean Machine-Valle Romano from Monaco dropping down to fourth place and the new leader was Portuguese boat Bigamist 6 followed by John Cook’s Cristabella and Italian boat Anonimo-Audi in third place.


After the island of Sech, British boat Cristabella took advantage of the new breeze to regain the lead while the Italian team climbed up to second place. Mean Machine-Valle Romano also kept the battle and was not far from the first two boats. But nothing could be done against Cristabella’s speed that rounded the next mark with an important advantage over Stay Calm, which was second now. Spanish navy boat Aifos, the only Spanish representative of the class in the Hublot PalmaVela, surprised everyone rounding the mark in third place.

Sailing towards Cap d’Enderrocat, the next leg, the wind dropped and shifted completely bringing finally the embat, a SW thermal breeze, 8 knots. Around Enderrocat Stay Calm tried hard again rounding first but followed closely by Cristabella and Mean Machine-Valle Romano.

And if fact it was John Cook’s Cristabella that clearly took the lead in the last leg, crossing the finishing line near El Arenal first. Second place was for Mean Machine-Valle Romano and Stay Calm was finally third.

The TP52 fleet rounds the islet of Sech. Palma, 19 April 2007. Photo copyright Txema Oliver / Hublot PalmaVela