Flavio Favini Wins Torbole
77 Melges 24 entered for the 5th leg of the Volvo Cup, at Torbole on lake Garda, including a number of America's Cup and Olympic sailors from across Europe. The Ora wind lived up to it’s reputation, although due to the intense heat on several days the wind was fluctuating much more than usual, with large windshifts and variations in pressure.
BluMoon helmed by Flavio Favini, with Tiziano Nava calling tactics, Franco Rossini (owner), and Stefano Rizzi on the bow sailed consistently enough to win the regatta.
“The second day day we made mistakes on our starts, and on the first day on our finishing, hopefully today we won’t make any mistakes” Flavio Favini joking at the start of the final day of the Volvo Cup in which the deciding two races were sailed in perfect conditions. On day two certainly not everything was going to plan for Flavio Favini and his team on Blu Moon being over the line on 2 separate occasions scoring an OCS, and BF, however with a final scoreline ( allowing 2 discards) of 36 points, ended 6 points clear of Furio Monaco (42 ) on Billo Baccani, and 11 points clear of Jamie Lea (47) sailing on Team Barbarians with Nigel young.
The 7th race of the series provided a chaotic setting, since many of the teams, including some of the best had failed to read a change in instructions posted on the notice board. The race committee had decided to change the finish from a downwind gate finish, and introduce a spreader mark after the gate, to make it easier to record the arrivals sequence. After having led the fleet throughout the race, Blu Moon (Favini) crossed the finish line only to realise that they had missed the spreader mark, and promptly sailed back to complete the course only to lose one place to Alfa Spider (Lorenzo Bressani) who won race 7. Further down the fleet chaos ensued with many boats gybing at the last minute to lay the spreader mark, and many boats trying to sail back to the spreader mark with the rest of the fleet planing downwind to the finish. Overall around 30 boats were recorded as not finishing the race.
Jamie Lea (Barbarians) sailed some excellent races, especially race 6, to win comfortably by several hundred meters in front of next placed Alina Helly Hansen (Luca Valerio), but counted some mid-results from day 2, to end 3rd overall.
Gullisara ITA 673, finished in 13th overall, and with a 9th score on the final race did enough to win the corinthian trophy, 28 points clear of Mikeal Lindquist on Rocad Racing SWE 532. Gullisara owned by Pino Comerio, helmed by Mario Ziliani, Alfio Lavazza (bow), Robert Eckstein (mast), Giovanni Ferrari (trim), and Bedo dell’a Aqua (tactics) finished the Volvo Cup with first place amongst the Corinthian teams.
The final day of racing included the “velocitek Long distance race” from Torbole to Malcesine, and back to Torbole. Velocitek were giving prizes for the “Speed contest”, a 10 second maximum, and average recorded speed. The speed contest was won by Mario Ziliani on Gullisara with 18.4Kts recorded over 10 seconds, and the fastest average speed was won by Alessandro Poggi on Magic at 17,9Kts. The overall race was won by Andrea Rachelli helming Altea to their second successive win at Torbole on the long distance race.