Some of the world’s greatest sailors have gathered in St Tropez to compete at the Giraglia Rolex Cup, and yet it was a group of friends and part-time sailing enthusiasts who won race 1 in the big boat division on a perfect Sunday afternoon. With the sun shining and the wind blowing 14 to 17 knots, the 113 boats couldn’t have wished for better racing.

The conditions were clearly to the liking of Paolo Bonomo and his crew of friends on board the Canard 41 Aurora. With a slight increase in the breeze late in the race, this worked in favour of Aurora and other boats at the smaller end of Class 0 and Class 1. “Of course we expected to win,” said Bonomo with a twinkle in his eye. The reality is that in handicap racing - where boats ranging from 30 feet up to 100 feet or more are pitched against each other – no one can expect to win. You just sail your best and hope that some luck goes your way.

So when Bonomo went on to say, “We came here only to win,” you had to take his comments with a pinch of salt. “We are friends and some of us have sailed together for 30 years,” said the smiling Italian. So how did it feel to beat a fleet that numbers some great professional sailors in its ranks? “That is a problem for them, not for us,” he laughed. On corrected time under the IMS handicapping system, Aurora finished just over three minutes ahead of Paul Nicolai’s French-crewed Fauve. Nicolai’s Dufour 44 beat Clive Llewellyn’s Grand Soleil 50, Mad IV, by just 12 seconds on corrected time.

The bigger boats enjoyed the 33-mile race around the Gulf of St Tropez, even if the results didn’t necessarily go their way. Neville Crichton’s magnificent, multi-million dollar race yacht Alfa Romeo might have finished just 29th on handicap, but the Kiwi businessman didn’t mind. Possibly the most technically advanced racing yacht in existence, the 98-foot canting-keeled machine gobbled up 33-miles in just two and a half hours, averaging over 13 knots around the track. Watching the boat move through the water, you have to wonder whether there is an engine driving a propeller underwater. But no, this is a sail-powered beast, albeit with an engine to help the crew operate the swinging keel and the sail controls with push-button hydraulic technology.

For Crichton, the three days of inshore racing in St Tropez are an opportunity to work up boat and crew in readiness for the big race on Wednesday, the 243-miler from St Tropez to Genoa via the Giraglia Rock off the northern tip of Corsica. “We’re not expecting to do well in the round-the-can racing. We’ve measured in overlapping headsails and optimised the boat for the long race. I don’t care how we do in handicap racing. We’re here to win the race to Genoa and to set a new course record.” If he does set a new record for the race, it will be his own record that he breaks. Sailing his previous Maxi, also known as Alfa Romeo, Crichton set the existing record time of 22 hours, 13 minutes, 48 seconds back in 2003.

While Alfa Romeo is set to spend the week racing in glorious isolation at the head of the fleet, today’s race gave a hint of a good match race developing between two Swan 601s, Cuordileone skippered by Leonardo Ferragamo and Artemis skippered by Torbjorn Tornquist. The Swedish owner has three-time America’s Cup winner and Olympic Champion Russell Coutts calling tactics, and today Artemis prevailed over the Italian boat by 37 seconds. Coutts commented: “We had great conditions today. It was just perfect. I haven’t sailed many times in St Tropez when it’s been like that. Fantastic. It’s been great to race out there with another boat and gauge your performance. We got a nice side of a big left-hand shift up the first leg, so we got ahead. But then we had some spinnaker problems during the first hoist. Cuordileone caught us up, and that actually made it a pretty good race.”

In the small-boat division, just 21 seconds separated the top three finishers on corrected time. Two Grand Soleil 40s grabbed the first two places, with Alexei Nikolaev’s Russian entry, Synergy, beating Italo Borrini’s Despeinada by just 10 seconds. Camillo Capozzi’s Ala Bianca finished in third place, just 11 seconds behind Despeinada. Italo Borrini has enjoyed a strong run of form at the Giraglia Rolex Cup, winning the small boat division in 2004 and finish runner-up in 2005, and he looks set to continue that success in 2006.

Now in its 54th year, the Giraglia Rolex Cup is established as one of the classic regattas of the Mediterranean. The regatta, sponsored by Rolex for the past nine years, comprises three days’ inshore racing in the Bay of St Tropez, and culminates in the 243-mile offshore race via the Giraglia Rock to the Italian port of Genoa.

Provisional Results on corrected time (IMS system) - Giraglia Rolex Cup Race 1

Class 0-1

1 Aurora – Berruto/ Bonomo (ITA) – Canard 41 – 02:04:11
2 Fauve – Paul Nicolai (FRA) – Dufour 44 – 02:07:24
3 Mad IV – Clive Llewellyn (FRA) – Grand Soleil 50 – 02:07:36

Class 2-5

1 Synergy – Gateway Overseas Ltd (RUS) – Grand Soleil 40RC – 03:38:58
2 Despeinada – Italo Borrini (ITA) – Grand Soleil 40R – 03:39:08
3 Ala Bianca – Camillo Capozzi (ITA) – Polaris 33 – 03:39:19

For full results please visit the organiser website at: www.yci.it

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