The Maxi One and Maxi Grand Prix classes today finished the Regata dei Tre Golfi, the opening offshore race of the IMA Maxi European Championship. Following part one of the 71st Regata dei Tre Golfi for the smaller handicap boats on 8 May, this second part saw 27 maxis, ranging from past overall winner, Giuseppe Puttini’s Swan 65 Shirlaf to Furio Benussi’s former Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race winner ARCA SGR, plus one maxi multihull, set sail from Naples’ Porticciolo di Santa Lucia marina at 1330 yesterday (Friday 22 May).

Part of Tre Golfi Sailing Week, the IMA Maxi European Championship, including Regata dei Tre Golfi, are organised by the Circolo del Remo e della Vela Italia (CRVI) in conjunction with the International Maxi Association and is supported by Rolex and Loro Piana.

In this year’s race there was breeze, occasionally 18 knots, but some crews reported as many as six or seven park-ups, hard-earned leads evaporating and the race effectively re-starting. But this, combined with race boats representing the pinnacle of IRC racing, resulted in ultra-tight finishes: in Maxi 1 the Lizz Flowers-steered Galateia beat Karel Komárek’s V to the finish line off Naples by 3 minutes 37 seconds while Sir Peter Ogden’s 77ft Jethou finished the race overlapped with Peter Dubens’ 72ft North Star followed 1 minutes 29 seconds later by Peter Harrison’s Jolt.

This was not a good race to lead as the frontrunner would invariably park-up enabling those behind to evade the calm patch. Galateia’s navigator Simon Fisher observed: “It was another challenging race but that is always the case here. There were plenty of snakes and ladders, but if you were behind there was often an opportunity to catch up. We had a few difficult moments, but in each case we were patient and took the next opportunity to get back into the race.”

There were multiple lead changes: in Maxi 1, V led Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones’ Magic Carpet e out of the Gulf of Naples upwind northwest to Ponza, Joost Schuijff’s Leopard 3 pulling up with V around the turning mark. En route back southeast to Ischia there was another park-up from which Galateia broke away, leading past Ischia as the breeze veered into the northwest. Despite this wind direction Galateia stalled on the windward side of Capri. “We suffered a bit worse than the other guys there,” said Fisher. “It's always the case when you're the canary in the coal mine: they can always react to whatever you do and everyone's on it these days with trackers and AIS, etc. V did a good job when they saw what we were up to.”

Approaching the Li Galli turning mark off the Amalfi coast, Galateia again stalled allowing V past. Returning back, V led around Punta Campanella (at the tip of the Sorrento peninsula – ablaze with a significant bush fire as the boats passed), but the race was not over – back into the Gulf of Naples Galateia erred west and found breeze that V did not and then defended all the way to the finish. “V took their opportunity to split away and looked really strong on the right but when we finally came back from the left we managed to cross them just before the finish,” concluded Fisher.

V’s tactician Ken Read reported: “It was the standard Maxi Europeans offshore: moments of beautiful sailing and diceball racing with lots of holes, especially at night - really hard, but fun. Nobody sleeps because you can’t – you are always about to either change a sail, tack or gybe or get stuck in a hole.” Earlier in the race as they were rounding Ponza they had lost out for a few minutes when they suffered a brief hydraulic shut down forcing them back to winching by hand.

Ultimately Galateia also won Maxi 1 under IRC corrected time from V and Leopard 3.

Among the former Maxi 72s in the Maxi Grand Prix classes, the racing was close throughout. Jethou, North Star and George Sakellaris’ Proteus led around Ponza. Heading back southeast Proteus overtook North Star before a park-up allowed Jethou and Jolt through, with Giovanni Lombardi Stronati’s World Champion Django 7X closing as they passed Ischia. Here another park up saw North Star and Jethou come out best. Passing north of Capri (none passed to its south this year) Proteus recovered ground and there was further compression approaching Li Galli. The race’s final part saw a match race between North Star and Jolt, both being just pipped to the post by the higher rated Jethou.

“There was a bit of a park up at the end,” recounted Jethou’s tactician, America’s Cup legend Brad Butterworth. “We had a few opportunities, but we made a couple of mistakes. We went the wrong way up the beat [to Ponza]. We were ahead and left of the fleet in a persistent right shift. Then we held on too long on port around Ponza and lost again. But we bounced back …” Butterworth concluded: “There were lots of restarts. But that's the way that the cookie crumbles here. But the racing is fantastic - there's a lot of really good sailors in this fleet and there's a lot of good boats.”

While Jethou sneaked in to collect line honours, Peter Dubens’ lower-rated North Star prevailed on corrected time ahead of Jolt and Django 7X. This was North Star’s third Regata dei Tre Golfi victory, her Wouter Verbraak gaining a similar navigation guru reputation in this race as Magic Carpet e’s Marcel Van Triest in Loro Piana Giraglia.
“Wouter is very strong - he is the secret weapon,” claimed North Star’s tactician Nick Rogers. “He's just got a really good handle on it even when it goes bad.” Despite the vagaries of the conditions, most of it was predicted although the race ended up being substantially faster than was being predicted before the start. North Star’s biggest loss was off Capri. “We were actually doing really well and then suddenly we just fell into the ‘windward lee’ of Capri and we just got sucked in. We just stopped and we were passed by everyone. It was bizarre.”

At the time of writing Maxi 3 and 4/5 were still to be decided. Tomorrow Sunday is a layday before inshore/coastal racing out of Sorrento from Monday 25 May to Thursday 28 May.