Team Django finishes third in Admiral’s Cup: decisive Fastnet in atypical weather
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Budget time in Cherbourg for the Rolex Fastnet Race, with arrivals drawing to a close and rankings definitely taking shape, including that of the highly anticipated Admiral’s Cup.
Going in order, the first boat to cross the finish line was Tom Laperche’s trimaran Ultim Lazartigue, which boasted super star Peter Burling on board for the occasion. The first monohull, on the other hand, was Black Jack 100, which confirmed itself as one of the most “line of honor” maxis around.
For the IRC overall ranking, which awards the overall Rolex Fastnet victory, at the moment one of the most credited boats for the final victory seems to be Jean Pierre Kelbert’s JPK 1050 Leon.
Rolex Fastnet, Admiral’s Cup verdicts.
More than 20 years after the last edition, the Admiral’s Cup, the team regatta that counts as a World Offshore Sailing Championship, has a new owner, the Yacht Club de Monaco with the team put together by Pierre Casiraghi and Peter Harrison, who fielded the Fast 40 Jolt 6 and the Tp 52 Jolt 3 on the water, with several Italian sailors on board.
Importantly, Jolt 6 won the Admiral 2 class, considering that Jolt 3 instead finished the Fastnet in seventh place in Admiral 1.
In second place was the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club with Karl Kwok’s team, which fielded the Tp 52 Beau Geste and the Fast 40 Beau Ideal. A difficult Fastnet for both boats, which finished ninth and eighth respectively.
Third place for Team Django, Giovanni Lombardi Stronati’s Italian team representing the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, which fielded the Wallyrocket 51 and JPK1180. The 51 finished the Fastnet in eighth position, while the JPK scored an excellent third place. The Wallyrocket 51 finished the Admiral’s Cup in third place in Class 1, the JPK 1180 in fourth in Class 2.
Admiral’s Cup, Team Django’s balance sheet.
There were 15 teams competing for this return of the legendary Admiral’s Cup, and considering the level of the fleet with 13 nations represented and sailors coming from Olympic classes, the America’s Cup and the top of ocean sailing, Team Django’s third place marks a successful campaign.
Winning the Admiral’s Cup of the rest is a difficult feat: it is raced between buoys, in inshore races, and in pure offshore as in the case of the Channel Race and the Fastnet. This means that it is not easy to choose two boats that perform well in all situations to make the team.
This edition of the Admiral and Fastnet was then “anomalous” from the weather point of view, with lighter wind conditions than those encountered on average in the Solent this season. Conditions that, especially during the inshore races, greatly favored the lighter, sail-powered Fast 40s over the JPKs, which do best in tougher conditions. Django JPK still managed to pull out a great performance at the Fastnet, finishing third on handicap by only 14 minutes after 695 miles of racing, after leading the handicap leaderboard at various stages.
The descent from the Fastnet at the carrying gaits, on which Wallyrocket 51 was relying heavily, was with winds never exceeding 15-18 knots, with even brief phases of pure becalming. The Italian 51 made up a lot of ground on the TP 52s on the return to Cherbourg, but on handicap it was unable to pull away enough from some boats that were behind it such as the Dutch Ker 46 Rost Van Uden and the Tyson 48 Elida.
Summing up, then, we can say that what may have determined Team Django’s third place may have been the points lost on the way by JPK during the coasts and the long upwind to the Fastnet of the Wallyrocket, a gait in which the boat in the IRC configuration pays a bit in terms of performance. The 51′ with a little more sustained strong wind on the descent to Cherbourg could probably have brought home a different result, but in offshore racing you “cook” with the weather ingredients you can find, and sometimes you need a bit of luck as well. What remains is a third place team finish that nevertheless outlines a well-structured and prepared campaign, with two boats that still proved to be very competitive within a fleet of very high value.
Mauro Giuffrè
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