Beccaria and Lipinski: third place, with 24h record, at Les Sables-Horta

What a comeback for Ambrogio Beccaria in the Ocean, the Milanese sailor who won the 2019 Mini Transat participated in Les Sables-Horta-Les Sables aboard the Class 40 Crédit Mutuel, paired with Ian Lipinski, finishing in third place. Also racing is another Italian, Andrea Fantini on the Class 40 Guidi, currently 300 miles from the finish line in Les Sables.

After an excellent start in second position, the sailors of Crédit Mutuel lost the lead of the fleet and, for the first three days of racing, struggled hard to regain it. Due to a series of minor weather misfortunes and the later proven wrong choice to go too far north, the de choc duo-as they are called beyond the Alps-had ended up in 13th position with a gap from the first of no less than 70 miles.

At the passage of the Horta buoy last Sunday, July 4, at 11:27 a.m., the two sailors set off with their bows toward Les Sables in third position and, propelled by a west-southwest wind thanks to a depression just above their heads, they managed to significantly reduce the distance from the first, with speed averages near 18 knots and peaks of 20 (impressive speed for a Class 40).

In mad pursuit of the race’s two leading boats, Project Rescue Ocean and Redman, Beccaria and Lipinski took advantage of a wind rotation that was advantageous to them and tried to catch up in every way, despite some damage on board including a broken small gennaker. Lipinski and Beccaria on Monday, July 5, covered 428.82 miles in 24 hours, setting the speed record on a Class 40 (the previous one, of 415 miles, was made by Ian Lipinsky himself, paired with Adrien Ardy, in 2019 during the Transat Jacques Vabre).

Lipinski: “The first few days, from the weather point of view, were pretty tough: we had to cross three depressions, we were sailing upwind for three or four days, living bent over, ce la vie! If we are third, it is certainly not the boat’s fault, but our own mistake.”

Beccaria: “Throughout the first part of the race to the Azores I had the impression that we had bad luck, all that upwind–but morale on board was still high. After we rounded the buoy in Horta. we realized that it was going to be a left-hand wall descent and that in four days we were going to get there-that’s when we started to get into it. Even though we realized we couldn’t get back into the match we tried, and we came very closei!”.