A dazzling final day of Act I of Les Voiles Trophies and awards Shenandoah, Scud, Skylark, Sumurun, Jap, EugeniaV, Espar II, Lulu, Bona, stars of the Classics… Nanoq wins the BMW Trophy again
A dazzling final day of Act I of Les Voiles Trophies and awards Shenandoah, Scud, Skylark, Sumurun, Jap, EugeniaV, Espar II, Lulu, Bona, stars of the Classics… Nanoq wins the BMW Trophy again
Classics are chic! For this final day, the gulf was decked out in its finest finery, with calm to rough seas and moderate to strong westerly winds, favouring sumptuous starts under spinnaker, on port tack in all the classes, the prelude to often decisive jousts at the head of each of the groups. Between the Mistral at the start of the week and the Challenge Day on Thursday, the Classic yachts completed two races, each contested in very different conditions: moderate winds yesterday, and a freshening Mistral today. As a result, the sailors were able to put their venerable steeds through their paces in very different ways on an extremely changeable stretch of water, forcing them to carry out a whole host of heavy manoeuvres, not least changing the headsails. Carrying under spinnaker, wind on the beam under genoa, then back upwind towards the head of the gulf and the Portalet under jib and genoa redrew the beautiful spectacle of the Voiles, a fantastic spectacle both on the water and from the piers. The three 12m JI boats, Il Moro di Venezia, France and Ikra were all keen to put on a spectacular speed run. In a matter of seconds, France got the better of Ikra, but not by enough to overtake Eugenia V (Rhodes 1968) on corrected time. It was the same scenario in the Auric Epoque Group as in Spartan, with Herreshoff’s speedy New York 50 dominating on the line, but unable to overcome its measurement handicap against Torben Grael’s formidable Scud (Herreshoff 1903), another winner in Saint-Tropez. Shenandoah of Sark, the impressive three-masted schooner (Ferris 1902) was the scarecrow of the Rolex Trophy support group. Beaten in Race 1 by the astonishing Paine Viveka, she bounced back magnificently in the breeze to win the day’s race and, at the same time, the prestigious Rolex Trophy.