A beautiful blue sky and warm sun, but very light wind on day three of the Youth Foiling Gold Cup Grand Final in Barcelona where six races were finished by as many teams who accessed the final fleet races.
Competitors left the dock at Marina Vela Barcelona at around 1pm and the Principal Race Officer, Maria Trujillo, gave the first starting procedure about an hour later.
Winds from 4 to 7 knots were blowing from south-east, turning right following the sun, making it very hard for the Persico 69F to actually foil. It didn’t make the competition less interesting, other skills were required of the sailors by the light, shifty wind.
Tactics, manoeuvring and being sync while pumping downwind, reading the wind on the racecourse and predicting the shifts, the Persico 69F is not just about being good foilers, it is a real sailing boat that requires all round seamanship.
DutchSail’s Janssen de Jong Mixed (NED) is leading tonight’s ranking, going into the final day of the closing event of the Youth Foiling Gold Cup, tied on points with Groupe Atlantic (FRA), they have three bullets each, while in third, with a six-point margin Team Black Salmon Argentina (ARG).
“Today we did a good job as a team,” Ismene Usman, flight controller on DutchSail said. “I think for it was our best day so far for how we worked together as a team, I am very proud of the way we performed today.
“We are on top, but very close to Groupe Atlantic. I was important to have a good start and have the freedom to tack whenever you wanted in the good pressure and good shifts as fast as you could. It would mean a great deal for us to win the title again, even though we have a different team member from our victory last year.”
Clean Sailors Youth Racing Team (ITA) is sitting on fourth position seven points behind the Argentinian, making it very hard, but not impossible, for them to climb their way to the best two teams who will challenge each-other in the do-or-die match race, after the last three fleet races.
“Today was a really tough day for our team,” CJ Perez, helm on Clean Sailors commented. “Barcelona has surely provided some tricky race conditions, today you really had to make sure you stayed in the breeze and connected well with the shifts.
“Tomorrow is a new day and there are still a lot of points to fight for. Our goal is to finish in the top two, it will be a tough climb to get there, but we’ll keep pushing, it’s all we can do.
“Winning the YFGC Grand Final would be huge for our team, especially since this is our first season, we’ve grown so much as a team together since our first event in Miami, I am really happy on how far we’ve come, and even if it doesn’t happen this time, we are stoked to go into the next season and fight for it one more time.”
The wind for Sunday local time looks quite light, making it more nerve-racking for the few teams that will go on the water to fight to get into the final match race at around noon and then know who the winner of the YFGC 2022 will be.
Full results: https://69fsailing.com/yfgc-2022-grand-final-barcellona-results/
