5.5 Metre class: Australia and Switzerland prevail on Day 2 of 5.5 Metre world championship

In today’s first race Arunga XII(Mark Tolhurst, Stephen Mc Conaghy and Thomas Spithill) stunned the fleet with a port tack start from the pin end of the line. Tolhurst says, “we always wanted to get a port end start at the leeward end of the line, and there was a bit of a wind shift right probably 20 seconds before the start, so we just went for the pin as hard as we could, tacked on to port and cleared the fleet.”

They were third at the windward mark, behind Shaolin (Patrick Zaugg, Andreas Kindlimann and Hans von Werdt) and The Jean Genie (Peter Morton, Andrew Palfrey, Ruairidh Scott). Arunga XII overtook both on the first downwind leg, then held their lead all the way to the finish. “We led round every other mark after that – it was very exciting for us to come through and get a win,” Tolhurst adds.

Another Australian boat, Ku-Ring-Gai III (John Bacon, Joost Houweling and Edward Wright) also had a great day, posting two second places, one achieved in the final few lengths of the second race, when they overtook New Moon lll (Mark Holowesko, Christoph Burger and Peter Vlasov) at the last moment.

With a third place in the opening race, they would have posted the most consistent performance at the championship so far, had it not been for a disqualification for falling foul the U flag at the start of race two yesterday. “Obviously we’ve got a big score to discard – I’ve never been in a position where I’ve had a big one so early and it was an unforced error too,” adds Bacon. “But we’ve got three good results – all the teams here are so good that any score in the top 10 is a keeper, so we’re in a really good spot and I’m pretty happy.”

Swiss entry Caracole (Bernard Haissly, Daniel Stampfli and Nicolas Berthoud) emerged as a clear winner in the second race. “We had a pretty good start, for once, and then good speed upwind,” says Stampfli. “We tacked once to the right, then came back to the left on the first upwind. We were not leading at the first mark, but we had an edge on the downwind which put us up to second place.”

On the next downwind he says, “we took every shift we could to be on the right hand side downwind and we were really clear we wanted to stay in the clean air, which helped to close the gap with New Moon lll. We started the second upwind just behind him and had to attack at this stage.” New Moonlllstill held a narrow lead at the windward mark on the second lap of the course, but Caracole overtook on the final run to finish with a comfortable lead.

With four races now completed it’s clear that this is a very challenging fleet in which to post consistent results and only one race winner features in the top four boats overall. Artemis (Kristian Nergaard, Johan Barne and Trond Solli-Saether) currently heads the leaderboard on 20 points, with Aspire (Przemek Gacek, Mateusz Kusznierewicz and Kilian Weise) and Ali Baba (Flavio Marazzi, Julie Marazzi and Eline Marazzi) tied on 23 points, while The Jean Genie lies fourth on 24 points.

Racing has also been very tight in the Evolution fleet, where only seven points currently separate the top seven boats. Singora (Hans Köster, Cedric Menzela and Mine Köster) was best placed in today’s final race. “We managed to get a very good start in clear winds, with enough power in the boat,” says Köster who is racing with his 17-year-old daughter and has owned his 1990 Iain Murray designed boat for 23 years.

“We come from the Baltic Sea, so it’s very new for us to sail in tidal water with the current and with these choppy conditons,” he adds. “We had a good first beat and a good run, then were able to control the other Evolution boats, which we didn’t do in the first three races.”

The day was rounded off by one of the 5.5 Metre class’s legendary pontoon parties, hosted by the Swiss contingent, who served fellow competitors and race officials with an excellent raclette, while the Italians also provided a selection of meats and red wines.

Report by Rupert Holmes