Artemis Racing on the charge

As Zen Too suffers a capsize on day two of the D35's Grand Prix Les Ambassadeurs

The second day of the D35's Grand Prix Les Ambassadeurs was physically very demanding for the teams. Six races were sailed today in a shifty westerly with plenty of action, men overboard, even a capsize...

A gusty, shifty, westerly wind of 9-18 knots, blew on Lake Geneva - demanding conditions, especially for the tacticians: “You had to be on the right side of the lake and it was not always easy today!" said Yvan Ravussin, tactician on Artemis Racing. Fred Le Peutrec, helmsman on Zen Too confirmed: "The constant shifts of this westerly wind make the tactics really difficult. What is interesting is that it is never really won, and never really lost. Sometimes it seems almost a bit random! Then when you see teams like Alinghi or Realstone that are regularly in front of the others, that’s not only luck!”

The sky became increasingly dark and grey today, but the squall finally hit in only when the boats were already moored up after racing.

At the end of day two Realstone Sailing and Alinghi have edged ahead of the competition, while Artemis Racing made a spectacular comeback, climbing to third overall. The team led by Paul Cayard had a great win in the eighth regatta after a tactical choice to sail along the shore. This has dropped Dona Bertarelli's Ladycat to fourth overall.

Okalys-Corum made several magnificent starts, but never made it to the top. "We sailed well, with a good speed, but we really need to make progress on the tactics. However the team has an enormous pleasure to sail together and it's been fantastic to be able to sail 6 races today", said owner Nicolas Grange.

Guy de Picciotto, owner of Zen Too, wonders what will happen tomorrow... "After a crash yesterday, today we capsized and the mast got stuck in the mud!" Approaching the windward mark, a violent gust caused the boat to pitchpole. It all happened in a slow, but spectacular way. More surprising, the crew has been able to right the boat without breaking anything and sailed the last two races.

On board Veltigroup there was also drama with owner Marco Simeoni falling overboard, not once but twice! The first time occurred during an abrupt manoeuvre, the second while the boat was practically upright and when he jumped on the back side of the rack, to try and help the boat from capsizing.

Results:

Paul Cayard reports:

A much better day today on board Artemis Racing as we moved up into third place overall. It was a long day on the water with six races in 12-18 knots of wind from the Southwest. We were much more consistent in our speed and handling of the boat and this gave us scores of 3, 3, 3, 1 5, 6.

One boat capsized today and another lost a crew member overboard. During the 3rd race, the breeze came up to 18 knots and was very gusty so bearaways around the windward marks were dicey depending on the wind strength you had when you got there. Fortunately, we had a pretty safe day although crew member Sarah Gundersen got her knee pretty badly banged up and will probably not sail tomorrow.

These boats are very demanding on the crew. After six races, they are beat. There is a social function on at the Societe Nautique de Geneve tonight and I will go alone to fly the Artemis colors as the rest of the team wants only to eat and go to sleep.

The forecast for tomorrow is for lots of rain and gusty winds again from the Southwest. We can expect 4-5 races again.