Palma World Cup 2013 Wrap Up

Image MartinezStudio.es/MapfreSofia | What a great way to return to the Olympic arena. As always just looking at the images you can see how fast, dynamic and changing Multihull racing is. Focusing on images, it is incredible how many angles, crew and boat positions you can have, even a super fast class like RSX can´t stand 200 pics on the same event, but with catamarans, you have so many boat trims and situations that are really unique. Not even mentioning sailing them of course, beyond some Dinos complains.

In the preview it was rather easy to guess a group of favorites, and the results confirms it. Reviewing the teams, I detected several Olympic sailors coming from other dinghy classes like Mandy Mulder (470), Renee Groenenveld (Elliot 2012) , Cecilia Carranza (Laser 2012) and surely many others.
The mixed mandatory option resulted finally in an unique and fantastic ingredient to make Catamaran racing even more interesting. For results and images check previous posts and CSN Fb page

Full results at N17 Tab https://www.trofeoprincesasofia.org/en/default/laregata/vertodoslosresultados/id/1/idsc2r/43

Regarding the advantage I assumed on girls helming,
the two first place somehow confirms it, but I think it wasn´t the case, specially with two French crews (sorry on the Davis Cup today…) fighting for the title like Moana Vaireux-Manon Audinet & Billy Besson-Marie Riou. Still much to come and we’ll if a trends develops.
As we mentioned already the Dutch team trained hard at Palma for months and it payed big time.
And the surprise could be the British teams doing quite well.

The Nacra 17 is provding good racing and entertainment with high speeds , vertical lifts and tricky handling making a real challenge to race in this class.

I have several reports on building issues, and some mentioned in this week posted reports by the Dutchs, the good news is that Nacra is putting a rapid service to solve them as I’ve been told by Arg team.

As I remarked the very first day after the election, being Olympic it is a double edge sword. You get the exposure and sales but you must deliver high quality for the demanding Olympic sailors campaigns. Issues are always present and the key is how they are solved, till now we’ve seen rapid reactions on the mast and latest hulls details so it is a good sign.
Also there is some concern on a dagger cases modifications, being a OD Class, I really don´t get how that can be allowed, but I will get more info in coming days.

Looking for Hyeres, as a reader commented, Ingrid Petitjean-Olivier Backes and Franck Cammas will be participating, making this class even more tough and competitive, with no room in the top 15 for any errors.

In short and at every single level of sailing
Catamaran Racing is here to stay.