Racing in Sardinia

i have a backlog of about three months worth of posts to get out, mainly because we have not stopped since June.

Racing in Sardina is pretty much the time when the season got busy for us; not that beforehand wasn't busy. After a three week crossing from the Caribbean, we had two weeks in Palma to change the boat from delivery mode and get it race ready.

There were two back-to-back regattas going down in Porto Cervo, the first being the Dubois Cup. This is open to all Dubois Designed Superyachts which resulted in 14 of the nicest and biggest sailing yachts  in the world taking part. The regatta was one that really gave (more like threw) every possible breeze scenario you could think of at us, with the islands of the Bonifacio Strait which separates Corsica and Sardinia, also providing for some challenging tactical scenarios.

Race One, is a race that would go down as the most oddball race I have experienced on the boat after three seasons on Zefira. After a postponement  due to lack of wind, the fleet got away in a variable 5-8 knots of breeze. within 15 minutes of the start we had 15 knots. After tacking on to the Starboard rhumb line in 18 knots for the 8-mile leg around the northern tip of Sardinia, the breeze kept building, and building and building! The breeze tipped the scales at 38 knots, everyone was shitting their pants with the full wardrobe of sails up and watching the mast do things that I had never seen it do before.

Once we were reefed, as usual, the wind died.We were forced to do the downwind through "Bomb Alley" with a reef in the main trying to hold our lead whilst the fleet kept coming at us in better breeze. Nearing the end of the downwind, now in less than 5 knots of breeze, the committee shortened the course to the final passage of Bomb Alley. Sure enough less than 500 metres from the finish, the breeze swung 180 degrees which is not pretty with 1950m2 of gennaker in the air.

Thankfully we finished the race before we broke anything too serious; keep in mind, we did do damage to every sail we had up (we snapped two main battens and pushed them through the batten pockets, blew the leach on the headsail, and chaffed through the tack of the gennaker through a gybe, oh and we  overran our mainsheet captive winch which was a total balls up!).

The rest of the regatta went pretty well and we ended up in Second Place overall which is good, but as usual not good enough!!

The second regatta was the Loro Piana Regatta, held a few days later. We got second in that one too and had some really good racing!

The definite highlight for me was having my nephew, Finn (oh an Tracy) over as shore crew. The little fella seems to be growing up way too quick! A big shout out to all the race crew too, they're a great group of guys and it is an honour to sail with such high profile and experienced sailors.

Massimo, Al (JB Jnr), Josh

Mass and Chico

Silvio (the most beautiful man in the cosmos), coming to grips with a slippery deck.

Me, clueless

Alexis doing his best Schwarzennegger impression

Josh and I

I call this "Casper's steeplechase"

Ian and Gio running the Kite sheets

Alexis doing the typical pre-race thing.

This and the next few photos are a sequence of us probably doing the biggest sail tear in history.  1950m2 of Gennaker   and approximately 60m of overnight stitching for the sail makers.