Official Melges 24 Blog

(c) Pierrick Contin - 2009 Volvo Cup - Alassio - Day 2

“Fantastic weather, blue skies, blue water, great wind, thrills, spills and amazing racing.” is how IMCA Secretary/Treasurer Tomi Hakola from Finland summed up today’s second day of racing at the Italian Volvo Cup event in Alassio.  The blue skies brought warm sun, bringing temperatures up into double figures at around 10 degrees C, a welcome respite for the 52 competing crews from 9 nations after yesterday’s near freezing conditions.  The wind was still in the North/North East at around 20-25 knots with lots of shifts, gusts and some choppy seas making for an extremely challenging day of racing and plenty of snakes and ladders both on the water and on the leaderboard.

Despite the often tricky conditions the race management team did a fantastic job to complete three more excellent races and with five races total now completed the discard has come into play.  Overnight leader Riccardo Simoneschi was amongst those who struggled to get on top of today’s tricky conditions and his 8, 8, 24 score line sees him dropping down into third place.  Without doubt the most consistent team of the day was that of Alberto Bolzan with a 3, 4 2 score.  Discarding their 11^th place of yesterday afternoon and adding in their 2^nd from the first race they now count 11 points total and lead the regatta by just one point from former Melges 24 World Champion Nicola Celon who remains in second overall despite an 18^th place in race three.  Lying in fourth behind Simoneschi is Luca Bursic who moves up from tenth and sitting on equal points with fifth placed Flavio Favini helming for Franco Rossini who won the first race of the day but then seemed to loose traction with 10 and 9 in races four and five. 

Going into the final day the standings remain incredibly close and with more good weather anticipated tomorrow we are expecting a thrilling climax to this first 2009 Volvo Cup event. 

Full Provisional Results After Five Races