Palmavela 2022. Wally 100 Galateia leads the IRC-IMA maxi fleet

After winning Thursday s blustery 28-nautical miles coastal race, today s two windward-leewards yielded another two victories for Wally 100 Galateia, whose crew can rely on the productive partnership of Murray Jones and Jordi Calafat in the afterguard.

But the Galateia crew had to defend hard on the closing stages of the first race after a problem dropping their spinnaker at the first leeward gate had a knock-on effect all the way through the light airs contest. They only just escaped through the finish line to win by 14 seconds, just ahead of Wally Cento rival Magic Carpet Cubed.  

After the wind all bit disappeared, the RCNP race management team made the right decision to hold out for a couple of hours for a second windward-leeward. Everyone’s patience was rewarded with a decent contest which Galateia won more comfortably, three minutes ahead of Andrea Recordati’s Wally 93 Bullitt on corrected time. The Italian flagged Bullitt has Luna Rossa’s Francesco Bruni as tactician and is now up to second overall sharing the same nine points aggregate as Magic Carpet Cubed.

Murray Jones, Galateia six times America’s Cup winning tactician reported “We made the first race a lot closer than it should have been. We had a bad drop at the leeward mark the first time. The string came off and so we had to do a manual drop. We nearly trawled it. it went in the water but luckily was not right in and by the time we recovered the other boats were really close behind. We held them up on the beat and because of that we used a heavier chute on the second run. It got very light and we were really struggling. It was neck and neck and we were just trying to stop them rolling over the top of us. On the second race we started on the pin end and wanted to go left. We peeled off Magic Carpet and plugged the left quite well. Jordi (Calafat) was giving us lots of good local knowledge advice.”

Jones is clearly enjoying racing with livewire Calafat who he sailed with at Alinghi. “It is so great sailing with Jordi again. We spent so much time together at Alinghi but have not really raced together much since then. We worked a bit on Maxi 72 projects but not really racing. He is just fantastic on the boat, he never stops. He is great here. He does not stand still and has an opinion about everything. And he is usually right.”

And Galateia is finding some light airs speed they felt was previously lacking, “The boat is going well in the light too, upwind and downwind so we are pretty comfortable with our speed, we are pretty confident”, Jones  acknowledged.

OVERALL PROVISIONAL STANDINGS. Day 2
(Position/Boat/Skipper/Race points/Total points)

IRC/IMA MAXI YACHTS
1. Galateia, David M. Leuschen, 1+1+1=3
2. Bullit, Andra Recordati, 4+3+2=9
3. Magic Carpet 3, Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones, 3+2+4=9

Event' website: www.palmavela.com

Race report by Palmavela Press office: Andy Robertson (english copywriter)

- Alejandro Varela, alejandro@infosailing.net

- Helena Paz, helena@infosailing.net

-Clara Giraldo, clara@infosailing.net

-José Luis Mirò, jlmiro@rcnp.es