First place in the final round of the RC44 Championship Tour competitions and in the Portuguese Cascais, and in the overall ranking of teams for 2018 was awarded to the team Charisma from Monaco. The team earned 28 points at the last tournament, and 9 points in overall standings.
Second place with 31 points during the Cup Cascais shared a British Team Aqua and the Slovenian Team Ceeref. In the overall standings, they took second and third places, with 10 and 12 points, respectively. Russian Team Nika at the competition in Portugal was only in third place, earning 33 points, and this result shifted our sailors from first to second place in the overall standings, which they now share with the Slovenian comrades.
In a sense, the victory of Charisma in Cascais can be called “technical”: although the competition was supposed to last four days, from 15 to 18 November, unexpectedly decided to reduce to three. Blame was the weather in the area, which hosted the race, 18 Nov completely calmed down the wind, and a six-meter waves, which the previous day caught from the Atlantic ocean, has not disappeared. Crucial race that could change the balance of forces among the leaders, just did not happen.
However, the difficult conditions in which the race took place on Saturday, November 17, even liked the second crew of the Russian team Bronenosec, which took sixth place in Cascais (40 points) and the last, ninth place (37 points) in the overall standings.
“It was great! We waited for this weather, yesterday was just awful. We love it when the wind anymore, I feel better, it was “our” conditions,” — said the head of “Battleship” Kirill Frolov.
But the leaders were not so optimistic.
“Complex was not only wind but sea state. Well that was only two races. At 22-23 knots it was more survival than the competition”, — said steering Charisma Niko Pun (Nico Poon), despite the fact that his team in both races this day came first.
For the Russian Team Nika waves and wind became a real problem. In the first race the team for the first two days of competition already accustomed to the weak wind, could not adapt to the stormy conditions. The result: sixth place, despite a good start. But before that, Team Nika were almost invariably in the top three, only once finishing in fourth place. But since the last race of the second day the Russians no longer carried. Then they for the first time in six races finished eighth.
The eighth and last race also ended for Team Nika complete defeat. In the middle distance, apparently from hitting the wave, the boat broke down detachable bow. In addition, the item began to interfere with the aerodynamics of the boat and slowing it down in the crevice formed in the housing of the water rushed. Sharply potjazhelevshie for a few tons of boat became sluggish and even more lost speed. To top it all off, during the cleaning of the gennaker due to tangled rigging a sail lost in the water. In order to catch him, had to lose a few more precious minutes.
“When you have no bow, from the bow of the boat does the Grand fountain. Beautiful, of course, but it is unpleasant. Water flowed from one side to the other, as if inside the boat something live your life. We had to just to finish of contest speech was not” — said the steering Team Nika ‘s Vladimir Prosikhin.
The team was determined to gain revenge the next day, but did not have the opportunity to.
“I’m disappointed that we couldn’t cope yesterday. The weather was “ours” and we would have to perform well, but could not. Unfortunately, we finished the competition in such a little disaffected condition. But that’s the beauty of racing RC44 — here there is no way that one boat was always the best,” said Prosikhin learn about winning Charisma.
