RC44 Porto Cervo Cup

Artemis Racing recovers and is just one point behind the current leader: Team Nika  

Porto Cervo, May 17, 2025. The penultimate day of racing at the RC44 Porto Cervo Cup saw three different winners in as many races held in a south-easterly wind of about 10 knots, stronger than those that had been forecast yesterday. In the morning briefing, PRO Maria Torrijo informed competitors that the start of the first race would be postponed by an hour to 1 p.m. and the third day of racing did indeed start punctually at the indicated time.

Thanks to today's performance (5-2-1), the Swedish team Artemis Racing owned by Torbjörn Tornqvist, and sailing with champions such as Iain Percy, Luke Parkinson, Maciel Cichetti and tactician Hamish Pepper, is encroaching on the lead held by Team Nika (2-6-5) hanging on to the top of the provisional standings by just one point. Third provisional position, but with a gap of 10 points from the second placed team, is for the Swiss team, Black Star, had a bit of a mixed bag of results today doing very well in the second race, but not as brilliantly in the first and last races, where they came sixth and eighth.

In the first race the fleet arrived compact at the first windward mark, rounded first by Markus Tornqvist’s debutant Gemera sailing with Checco Bruni as tactician. This team finished third behind the winner Charisma and Team Nika in second place. The seventh race of the series overall, and second of the day, saw Black Star leading from start to finish. Second place for Artemis who passed Lanzarote Calero Sailing inside the mark at the leeward gate. The Spanish team tailed Black Star for half the race, simultaneously rounding the leeward gate on opposite tacks, then finishing in fifth place. Third place for team Charisma, who was seeing the best performance of the day up to this point.

The final race started with menacing dark clouds building behind Porto Cervo, but fortunately the breeze on the race course remained stable both in direction and intensity. Most of fleet headed for a rotation on the right hand side where Charisma held the lead until the approach to first windward mark, where they were sucked into the group arriving compact at the mark. First was Artemis, followed by Aleph Racing, Lanzarote Calero Sailing and Gemera. The positions of the fore mentioned teams remained unchanged until the finish line, albeit with battle for third place between Lanzarote Calero Sailing and Gemera, won by the Spanish team from the Canary Islands.

Hamish Pepper, tactician of Artemis: “It was a very positive day for the team with solid performance. Torbjörn helmed very well, especially in the maneuvers close to the other boats. We managed to reach good speeds on the race course and the guys on board helped me with perfect maneuvers. If you can make a good start and exploit the speed of the boat, you have a good chance of arriving well at the windward mark, that’s what the crew did today. We are satisfied, it was a good day with excellent partials.”  

Tomorrow, the last day of racing with three more races to go, will be a battle for the victory of the RC44 Porto Cervo Cup. The Race Committee has chosen to anticipate the first start to 11.00 a.m. CEST and the forecast is for westerly winds of around 15 knots.  

The event is organised by the YCCS in collaboration with the RC44 Class, with the support of the YCCS technical partner North Sails.

For further information, results, entry list, official documents, programme and photos please visit the YCCS website.