Paprec lead after two wild opening races in Lanzarote, with shredded kites littering the course and old-school navigation proving no handicap.
Jean-Luc Petithuguenin's French team top the Marina Rubicón Lanzarote 52 SUPER SERIES Sailing Week standings on tiebreak after sharing a race win and a second place with circuit leaders Sled across two breezy, bruising contests. Winds pushed well over 25 knots in the second race, and by most accounts seven or eight spinnakers were shredded across the fleet, the most seen in many years.
Parec's reputation as strong-wind specialists was well earned on the day, though the team managed it with a notable handicap. Navigator Yoann Richomme, the Vendée Globe runner-up who has joined the squad this season, lost all electronics before the first race and had to work with a compass alone. "I lost my connection to all the electronics before the first race and so sat down and did it with a compass, old school," he said.
It clearly worked. "It was an amazing day. We had two beautiful starts and Loick Peyron was amazing as tactician, he weaved us through the holes in the wind and through the fleet," Richomme said. "The first thing we do have is speed downwind. We have great speed and good manoeuvres and upwind we managed to pull it off quite nicely. We did not break anything, we did not make any mistakes. We saw so many spinnakers breaking and we had some safe calls and that was the way to go today."
Peyron's role as tactician was central to the day. The ocean racing legend guided the team to two excellent starts and first beats, and had already shown Paprec's downwind pace at last year's world championship in Cascais, where they missed the world title on the final day by the narrowest of margins.
Sled were equally impressive. Their audacious port tack start in Race 1 was the talking point of the fleet, crossing on port while most boats piled onto the committee boat end of the line, and leading to the top mark by a clear 50 metres. Back at the dock at Marina Rubicón, which lies in the south-west of the island across from Fuerteventura, mainsail trimmer Don Cowie was still buzzing. "Another port tack start!" he said. "This one was out of the box again. It was another good call by the back of the boat. We pulled it off but maybe not quite as well as last month in Porto Cervo. Everybody was piled up at the right end of the line and wanted to go right. But we are not sure of the race track here and it left the option open."
Cowie was candid about how close to the edge things got in the second race. "Keeping the boat and everything in one piece was key, we saw 27 knots in that second race with some big squalls. The key was to get round without breaking a spinnaker, without breaking any thing or any one. It was hairy, we were pretty much on the limit. We have a good downwind trimmer, we have a good helmsman and good people calling the pressure and we were conservative at times. We probably did not sail the boat as fast as we could downwind at times, we tried to keep a little in the bank to not break sails."
Andrea Lacorte's Alkedo Vitamina sit third overall on ten points, one ahead of Alpha Plus sailed by Shawn and Tina Kang. Racing resumes Wednesday from midday with more strong tradewinds forecast.
