Voiles d'Antibes 2009 – Spirits 1st and 2nd in Spirit of Tradition Class

Nazgul wins race 'by an embarrassing margin . . .'

The Voiles d'Antibes is generally considered the curtain raiser for the Classic Mediterranean season and the Spirit of Tradition class this year saw two Spirits taking part. The first was ILHABELA 2, a Spirit 46 from 2005, joined by the new Spirit 76 NAZGUL.

We have these reports from Antibes, the first from NAZGUL and the second from ILHABELA.

''NAZGUL had a great regatta in Antibes, where we finished 2nd behind the Spirit 46 ILHABELA in the Spirit of Tradition Class. The first 2 days were only 3-8 knot breezes, but even then we pulled out substantial leads on the fleet, only to lose downwind with the (rather small in hindsight) asymmetric. The last 2 days saw strong winds of 30 knots with gusts to 40. We were off! 10 knots upwind at 22 degrees apparent, with full main and genoa. We were leading the next boat on the water by over an hour before the race was abandoned with just 15 minutes before we would have finished. The last day was similar and the result was the same - we won overall by an embarrassing margin on the water and on corrected time. Downwind we saw 15.3 knots, surfing 2 metre waves!'

Commissioned in November 2005 ILHABELA has now covered more than 4000 miles, of which 1000 were sailed between Benodet and La Rochelle in the Atlantic.

Other passages have been in the Mediterranean from “Cote d’Azur” up to Corsica. Once she arrived there in 2006, she easily got through her first “mistral” condition with gusts up to 45 knots - all sailors knows that the “Bouches de Bonifacio” are not a place to go without a good boat and good crew, even in August!

Usually, she attends all the Classic Panerai Regattas in France : Antibes 2007, Cannes 2007, Cannes 2008, and other IRC races in Porquerolles for example.

Her last race, last week, was“les voiles d’Antibes 2009”, where the fight was not easy once again with fantastic mistral conditions three days out of four. During the first day with poor wind condition she had to save her rating against a 33 feet 1968 TINA.

After that, the weather conditions had suddenly changed and her first competitor became definitely NAZGUL as the “mistral” made the big boat much more dangerous than the first day.
NAZGUL was surfing probably more than 15 knots and was going straight to victory though ILHABELA had several time her speedometer blocked at 12 knts.

The fourth day there were only the two SPIRIT YACHTS in the “Spirit of tradition class” still in the race as the two other boats had give up because of the weather conditions.

In the overall result ILHABELA finally won after the jury had cancelled a race on which NAZGUL was in front of her.

Therefore another battle will take place later in September in Cannes between NAZGUL  and ILHABELA . All other Spirit Yachts in the Mediterranean are enthusiastically invited to join us.