Day 4 Highlights – Puerto Sherry 52 Super Series Sailing Week, Spain

The penultimate day of the second regatta of the 2019 season brought great conditions on the waters off Puerto Sherry. The sea breeze blew between 12 and 15 knots for the two races sailed. As if to underline just how high the standard is all the way through the eight-boat fleet – after Andy Soriano’s Alegre won the first race of the day, Race 7, and Tina Plattner and the team on Phoenix 11 triumphed in the second windward-leeward, Race 8 – now seven different boats have won races during the four days of racing so far. And the results rollercoaster continued today. The very challenging breezes that are hard to read and to predict, the timing of the windshifts are compounded by the extremely even fleet. From a second row start it is nigh on impossible to gain more than a place or two. The exception today seemed to be Bronenosec who hauled themselves right back into contention for the historic Royal Cup when they improved from fifth to third during the second half of the second race. Those hard earned gains, scored through precision sailing, astute low risk tactics and a keen eye for a developing opportunity are all of what ensure the blue-hulled Bronenosec will enjoy a showdown against their friends and rivals on Azzurra for one of the class’s sought after pieces of silverware. And in the other blue corner is Azzurra who also have a current Olympic champion in a key role, 2016 gold medal winning Nacra 17 helm Santi Lange who joined Azzurra just over a year ago. He is loving the challenge of racing at this difficult venue where he finished third in the 2003 Tornado world championships, the same year Fantela – an ex Optimist World Champion – was crowned World Youth Champion for the first of three times. After winning Thursday’s second race, Azzurra followed up with a second in the first race today to lead the regatta. But the wheels suddenly came off with an all too easily gained eighth place, which relegated them to second, one point behind Bronenosec going into the last day. So too it was a patchy day for Ergin Imre’s Provezza who paired a third to a sixth to lie third. Just four points off the lead, the red-hulled Vrolijk design has every chance of going one better than their second place in Menorca last month.