RC44: The RC44 is (a lot) more than just a big dinghy...

Sea Dubai. Image copyright Nico Martinez/RC44.

by Sharon Allison

Sea Dubai Sailing Team's best result Thursday was fourth place in the last race. The race committee, with Peter Reggio in charge, ran four races altogether to start the first day of the fleet races of the Al Maktoum Sailing Trophy at Dubai International Marine Club, but after a brilliant first place in the match race event we really disappointed ourselves in Thursday’s fleets races.

The conditions were fantastic, strong winds with plenty of shifts to get our hands on but we were completely plagued by mistakes. We ended up in sixth place with twenty four points behind Katusha with twenty points. The second race should have been our best but we totally misjudged the shifts. We were first around the windward mark after a great start and upwind leg but we went to the left side of the course, everyone else went right and caught the best wind so we ended up finishing in sixth place.

All our starts were good but we just couldn’t get the boat speed because our tactics were bad and we ended up with two sixth places a fourth and eighth at the end of the day and not a good feeling overall. It will take time for Raimondo to understand the boat, this was his first real experience of being at the helm of the RC44; he has done a lot of big boat sailing but mostly as crew. His helming has been mostly on dinghies and although a lot of people call the RC a big dinghy, it’s a lot of boat to handle especially in strong winds. But we are a team and becoming stronger, we had a bit of a honeymoon during the match race which was nice but we need days like today to bind us together more solidly.

Congratulations to Team Aqua, they had a great day and came first overall. Artemis ripped a hole in their spinnaker in the third race which just got bigger and bigger until finally it blew out and they came last because of it but managed to come seventh at the end of the day. Stronger winds are predicted for the next two days which is going to mean some pretty exciting stuff on the water especially around the marks. Racing starts at 11:00 on Friday.

Results

Pos Teams Pts Race 1 Race 2 Race 3 Race 4
1 AQUA 6 1 2 1 2 Chris Bake / Cameron Appleton
2 Artemis 13 3 4 5 1 Torbjorn Tornqvist / Terry Hutchinson
3 CEEREF 15 2 7 3 3 Igor Lah / Rod Davis
4 No Way Back 19 4 1 7 7 Pieter Heerema / Ray Davis
5 Katusha 20 5 5 2 8 Bob Little / Paul Cayard
6 Sea Dubai 24 6 6 8 4 Raimondo Tonelli / Markus Wieser
7 Austria Team 25 8 3 9 5 René Mangold / Christian Binder
8 Islas Canarias Puerto Calero 28 7 8 4 9 Daniel Calero / José Maria Ponce
9 BMW ORACLE 30 9 9 6 6 Mike Perris / Adam Minoprio

Dubai International Marine Club
RC44