Puerto Portals 52 Super Series Sailing Week Preview - Tough, tougher, toughest

Puerto Portals 52 Super Series Sailing Week day 4 © Max Ranchi / www.maxranchi.com

Welcoming 13 teams from nine nations including two new teams, one new boat, Puerto Portals 52 SUPER SERIES Sailing Week looks set to be the toughest regatta of the season so far.

With Ergin Imre's freshly launched, brand new Provezza 11 and two teams which are new to the world's leading grand prix monohull circuit - the French Team Teasing Machine and Brasil's Criouala Team - at 13 boats representing eight different nations, the entry for next week's Puerto Portals 52 SUPER SERIES Sailing Week will be the biggest and the strongest for many years.

After two hotly contested regattas in Newport, Rhode Island As the circuit returns to Europe and the very familiar waters of the Bay of Palma, it is Tony Langley's recently crowned Rolex TP52 World Champions Gladiator which leads the circuit standings. Each of this season's three regattas so far have had a different winner in Provezza, Team Vayu and most recently Gladiator. Many seasoned observers consider that the annual return to Puerto Portals - the circuit's most visited home from home - will see a fourth different team atop a regatta podium.

Dream debut? 'Dream on!...says Cutler

After winning the first regatta of the season in Palma late April, the dream storyline would be a Provezza debut victory. Their new Vrolijk design may be described as a much closer evolution - an upgrade - of their successful Provezza 10 - whilst Botin's new Alegre and Platoon Aviation represent a new hull design entirely. And so the talented Turkish flagged team might logically be expected to learn their new boat quicker and easier. But Kiwi skipper-helm John Cutler has his feet firmly anchored in the real world and doesn't want to entertain such a fantasy.....

"You can dream that!" Cutler chuckles, "But you look at how long it took us to get Provezza 10 up to speed and how long really good teams take to get new boats up to speed, regardless of what the design process has promised in terms of gain. It takes a long time and is a long process. What I would like is for the new boat to have no problems and prove somewhat competitive. It takes a while to get these boats up to speed which is why Ergin chose to build when he did, so we get a couple of regattas this season and then have a decent break before next season. You can see how the other new boats have not been immediately on the pace compared to a boat which has been sailed for four or five years. So hopefully we are near the pace and the boat proves to be reliable. These are a couple of good objectives for the week."

The complete Provezza team have had a full week of training before taking a short break ahead of their final build up for the 52 SUPER SERIES Puerto Portals Sailing Week. Only in the last days of pre-regatta training will the new Provezza line up against other TP52s for the first time.

Meanwhile Cutler likes the prospect of returning to tactical racing on the Bay of Palma where the team won their first circuit regatta together in 2017. "We like Palma it is a good starting point. It is getting late in the season and so the water is hot and the land is hot so the sea breezes are dropping in intensity and so if we take advantages in terms of the shifts, we might have some good races. I have no real expectations of this event, it is about seeing where we are and that will be very exciting."

Circuit leaders Gladiator, sticking to the process at what will be "hardest event to win this season so far".....

And it is all new for Tony Langley's Gladiator team. They top the circuit standings by three points ahead of Doug DeVos' Quantum Racing powered by American Magic with Takashi Okura's Sled only nine points behind in third.

Gladiator's young project manager Feargal Finlay smiles, "A fourth different winner? Why not? This season's regattas are wide open. Look at Alpha + they just had two wins in Newport 9 (and finished fourth overall). And a lot of teams have a lot more pressure on them than Gladiator. I think boats like Quantum Racing powered by American Magic, Platoon Aviation, Alegre have still to prove themselves a bit this season and need to start winning regattas before the season is too far gone."

But he points out, "By all accounts this will be the hardest event to win this season so far. And we all know what Puerto Portals is like now, it is 35 degrees here now each day and you can sit around waiting and waiting and have to be ready to go at a minute's notice. And you can have anything from six to 18 knots on any given day. I think the last two regattas in Newport RI saw boats winning off the favoured end of the start line and using their boat speed. This will be a lot more about fleet management, more tacking battles. And with 13 boats it is a completely different game to 10."

Finlay sums up, "With Gladiator we stick to the processes we have which have worked well in Newport, but there are those three more boats here now. We are very confident in our boat speed, we are confident in our team and the process, bit now it is a different regatta to the last three. There will be new challenges. We are not looking at the results so much as just looking to take it one race at a time. It is hard to ignore the fact we have just won the worlds and are leading the circuit, but we are taking it one step at a time, do what we do best and make the boat go fast. The big one for us is not letting the pressure get to us, which it kind of did on the last race of the Worlds, we kind of knew we could win and ended up in an unnecessary tacking duel with Sled."

Phoenix and Platoon Aviation have high hopes

Winners at the 2023 season's finale in Puerto Portals last year and also victors in 2021 were Hasso and Tina Plattner's Phoenix team who might well be considered contenders again, tactician Ed Baird looks forwards to the challenge. "It is always a fun venue. It is always hard to win one 52 SUPER SERIES let alone repeat a win. We were fortunate to have such a good week last time and will be doing our best again this time. And it is wonderful to see the fleet growing and it should be great racing."

With a third place at the Rolex TP52 World Championship in Newport things are moving in the right direction for Harm Müller Spreer's new Platoon Aviation, a team for whom the Bay of Palma has been a happy hunting ground in the past. Tactician Vasco Vascotto is looking forwards to returning to Puerto Portals which historically has such strong link to the TP52 class and the 52 SUPER SERIES,

"We are very happy to return to the waters off Puerto Portals and the bay of Palma de Mallorca, it is always one of the symbolic places for this class. And it is great to see the class once again gaining strength and depth we hope to have numbers of this type in the future too. On Platoon Aviation were obviously happier with the latest result, a podium is an excellent result, but we cannot be satisfied with that and need to work hard and sail smart to keep getting better."

New kids on the block...

The two new teams are mainly looking to dip a toe in the water and see how they fare in this rarefied atmosphere ahead of 2025. Brasil's Crioula Team is led by two brothers, Eduardo and Renato Plass. They have raced their older TP52 - a former Paprec - in South America with considerable success and now come to the 52 SUPER SERIES with the one of the fastest boats of recent years, the former Provezza X. Tactician and project manager Sam Albrecht is a two times Olympian who leads a team which is a mix of pro and amateur sailors drawn from the same club Veleiros do Sul.

And well known French offshore racer Eric De Turckheim has bought the former Gladiator and after many years of offshore successes on the most coveted offshore classic races with his 54 foot offshore racers Teasing Machine is now set to go grand prix inshore racing. The team is led by round the world racer Laurent Pages.