Following yesterday’s strong gusts, conditions were dreamy today with a gentle ten knots of thermal breeze and the ever-faithful sunshine. Offering up champagne sailing to the Modern and Maxi fleet having a ball out on the water training, the Gulf of Saint Tropez also reserved a warm, welcoming embrace early this afternoon for the 41 Classic yachts racing from Cannes in the Yacht Club de France’s Coupe d’Automne..
Following yesterday’s strong gusts, conditions were dreamy today with a gentle ten knots of thermal breeze and the ever-faithful sunshine. Offering up champagne sailing to the Modern and Maxi fleet having a ball out on the water training, the Gulf of Saint Tropez also reserved a warm, welcoming embrace early this afternoon for the 41 Classic yachts racing from Cannes in the Yacht Club de France’s Coupe d’Automne. The first official races of this anniversary edition of Les Voiles de Saint Tropez will kick off tomorrow for the Modern and Maxis, whilst the Classics have another day to hone their weapons for battle from Tuesday onwards.
The Modern and Maxi yachts take centre stage tomorrow Champing at the bit throughout the day as they powered across the Gulf of Saint Tropez, the huge crowds that came to the village this Sunday were treated to an absolutely eye-popping show, which augurs well for tomorrow’s action. Hostilities commence at 11 a.m. tomorrow with the Modern yachts setting sail from the Portalet tower. Boasting a fleet of 127 yachts ranging from a 9-metre sportsboat to the vast racer-cruisers measuring over 15 metres in length, they will be split into four classes in line with the IRC rule. “We’ve been working on the different rating bands in a bid to create some dense and uniform fleets with the emphasis on safety. It’s dangerous to have boats which perform very differently on the same starting line. For example, we’ve grouped together the IRC 0 and 1 into one very racing-oriented IRC B class,” explains Sylvain Bretagne, vice-president of sailing at the SNST. At the other end of the spectrum, the Tofinou 9.50s have been specially confined to IRC E to prevent them having to race alongside much larger boats with very similar ratings. As for the 41 Maxis, much to the delight of spectators, they are due to dock out late morning tomorrow but they’ll be jousting in the bay off Pampelonne from noon. The Maxis will also be split into four categories with the class competing in two different types of races: windward-leewards for two of them, coastal courses for the other two, each of these involving two fleet starts with around 10 boats. “Given that they share similar performances, this is largely sufficient for putting on a show. The crews come to Les Voiles to race against their direct rivals. There’s nothing to gain from it; it’s all about the sheer pleasure of sharing a moment in time,” explained Georges Korhel, Principal Race Officer of Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, on the eve of the first start procedures. On the programme for tomorrow’s racing are light airs, which might well pick up over the course of the afternoon with a flukier SW’ly potentially increasing to around 15 to 18 knots.