Breeze wins first Farr 40 Euromed

TheDailySail talks to Adrian Stead about what went on in St Tropez

The first of the Farr 40 Euromed series was completed over the weekend in St Tropez. The racing was planned over three days, however a big easterly gale cancelled racing for the Friday, fortunately four races were sailed on the Saturday and three on the Sunday to complete the event.

Conditions of Friday caused some concern for the fleet in the harbour, with the wind blowing from 45 to 55 knots, however the direction was just south enough to give the boats some shelter.

Two boats nearly did not make the racing, having been delayed in their return from Miami’s SORC. Twins and Norwegian Steam had a Challenge Aneka style arrival on the Thursday night. The ship they were on was unable to dock in Monaco due to the weather and was forced to anchor off Toulon. The crews then met the ship by speedboat and successfully unloaded both the yachts from the ship - while still at anchor. A nerve-racking time as the ship pitched and rolled in the big seas. Amazingly both yachts were unscathed and sailed the 50 miles to St Tropez in double quick time ahead of the building gale.

Racing got underway on Saturday in much more benign conditions, with Norwegian Steam scoring a 2,1 in the first two races, the crew probably still running on adrenalin from their delivery.

The course was laid close in to the town and this resulted in a shifty, light breeze in the south westerly conditions.

Cacaharaza, with Andy Beadsworth as tactician, had a good start to the event scoring a 5,2,9 but fell foul of the black flag on the fourth race of the day. Current World Champions Nerone were also off to a good start but they too were caught with the black flag on the fourth race and failed to recover.

There is much debate with the class between the merits of tiller steering over wheel, and Breeze, who won overall, has recently been modified to a tiller. “It was our first regatta with a tiller in, so that was quite nice” commented Breeze's tactician Adrian Stead. “It has helped us, but it was also flat water.”

Otherwise it was a close as ever with six different race winners. “You had to keep chipping away, sometimes you would find yourself back in last place and have to try and turn it into a fifth or a sixth” continues Stead. “It was less about boatspeed, and more about shifts and amount of pressure. There were a couple of new boats and when they were on the right shifts they were up there.”

For Stead there was no real surprises with how the fleet stacked up: “ Strunge Light was still very competitive with Jesper Bank now as tactician and any one of eight boats really could have won the regatta. Various boats took themselves out of the equation with one bad race. We got an eleventh, but at one point during that race we were fourth. It was really close racing; it reminded me of 49er racing in a shifty inshore venue.”

Alberto Signorini, a previous Farr 40 owner who is no longer racing his boat, is organising the circuit, and is expecting 17 or 18 boats at the next Deutsche Bank Euromed event in Cala Galera, Italy, 28 to 30 May.

		Boat Name	Owner	Tactician	R1	R2	R3	R4	R5	R6	R7	Total
1	ITA 1	Breeze	Vincenzo Onorato	Adrian Stead	4	5	6	4	11	1	6	37
2	GER 5055	Struntje Light	Wolfgang Schaefer	Jesper Bank	11	3	8	5	6	6	1	40
3	FRA 007	Twins2	Erik Maris	Francois Brenac	3	11	3	6	9	8	4	44
4	ITA 13711	TWT	Marco Rodolfi	Tiziano Nava	7	6	5	OCS	2	2	12	49
5	ITA 1805	Joe Fly	Giovanni Maspero	Luca Santella	14	9	7	3	5	3	8	49
6	ITA 40091	Shinning Sr	Domenico Cilenti	Francesco Bruni	1	7	12	1	8	12	10	51
7	GBR 25R	Fiamma	Alessandro Barnaba	Branco Brcin	10	13	1	8	4	13	2	51
8	ITA 2272	Nerone	Massimo Mezzaroma	Vasco Vascotto	6	4	2	15	10	10	5	52
9	NOR 40	Norwegian Steam	Eivind Astrup	H. Horn Johannsen	2	1	14	15	3	9	9	53
10	GBR 7040R	Calvi	Carlo Alberini	Gabriele Benussi	13	12	11	2	7	4	7	56
11	GBR 46R	Aleph	Hugh Lepic	Bertrand Pace	8	8	4	15	12	12	3	62
12	ITA 4038	Madina Milano	Dario Ferrari	Eddy Owen	9	14	10	10	1	7	15	66
13	AUS 69R	Cacharaza	Marcos Vivian	Andy Beadsworth	5	2	9	15	13	11	15	70
14	GBR 8940R	Farrfalina	Rob Goddard	John Brinkers	12	10	13	9	14	14	11	83