2001 Giraglia Rolex Cup

Photo by Guido Cantini / Strategic

For the second year running, the multi-million dollar Maxi yachts have been
thwarted in their attempt on the Giraglia Race. It was the turn of the
40-footers to grab the top placings on corrected time in the Giraglia Race,
the 243-mile offshore challenge that brings the Giraglia Rolex Cup to a
close.

When the wind disappeared from the Mediterranean as the big boats pulled
into Genoa on Friday afternoon, it seemed the Maxi yachts would dominate
the rankings on corrected time, while the rest of the fleet floundered on a
glassy sea.

Nautor Challenge Rounds Girgalia Rock. Photo by Guido Cantini

But while the wind was nowhere to be seen from the Italian coastline,
further out to sea the smaller yachts were storming down in their own
breeze of 20-25 knots. Querida, a custom-built Vismara 40, found breeze
nearly all the way from the start in Saint-Tropez to the Giraglia Rock off
the coast of Corsica. And when some of the bigger boats got stuck in a
windless zone within sight of the finish at Genoa, Querida and a group of
IMX-40s stormed down behind them in their own breeze.

By Saturday morning it became apparent to the organizers at the Yacht Club
Italiano that no one was going to get close to the corrected times of
Querida and Imagine, an IMX-40 that also enjoyed the same conditions of
almost uninterrupted wind. On corrected time, Gianluigi Serena and his crew
on Querida beat Gilles Argellies and the Imagine team by little more than
two minutes over a course that had taken them 36 hours to complete.

Grant Dalton on Nautor Challenge. Photo by Guido Cantini

Almost an hour behind these two was a group of three more IMX-40s, of which
the first was Fare Well, owned by Roger Pierrejean. Fare Well has been by
far and away the most consistent boat in the Giraglia Rolex Cup this week.
With a third place in the Giraglia race to add to her 3,5,8 score in the
inshore races off Saint-Tropez, the Fare Well crew are easy winners of the
overall trophy for the Giraglia Rolex Cup. Pierrejean will be one of those
to receive a Rolex timepiece - in his case an exclusive Yacht-Master
Rolesium - at the prize giving at the lavish Yacht Club Italiano on
Saturday evening.

As for the Querida crew, they were delighted to have won the prestigious
Giraglia Race, now in its 49th year. The mast man Fabrizio Toselli had
never competed in the race before, but he was proud to have won at his
first attempt. "This is the best race in the Mediterranean, and the most
historic. Also, because I am from Genoa it is particularly important for me
to have won this race."

Vae Victus (Germany) at the Rolex Giraglia Cup. Photo by Guido Cantini

Other competitors were conquered by the fickle conditions. Fewer than half
of the 122 entrants completed the race, with many sailors frustrated by the
lack of wind. Most remarkably, the American Maxi Sagamore, which had held
the lead for some periods of the race and was in a solid third position
with just 30 miles to go, decided to retire when she was only 11 miles from
the finish line. TV tycoon Jim Dolan had a plane to catch so was forced to
switch on the engine when he was frustratingly close to the end of the
Giraglia Race.

A group of Maxi yachts hung on until the bitter end, but one by one they
sailed into the hole just miles from the finish. When the wind filled in
again, all four Maxis moved in unison and crossed the line within a minute
of each other - Solleone, Virtuelle, Magic Carpet and Rrose Selavy.

Once again, though, it was the 1975-vintage Grampus that stole class
honors in the big boats. The owner from Genoa, Carlo Puri Negri, admitted
he had been blessed with a favorable IMS rating in a 60-foot boat that
cost a fraction of the Maxi yachts he had so soundly beaten on corrected
time. Whether through embarrassment at his recent successes or simply a
desire to go faster in a newer boat, the man who is part of the Pirelli
dynasty has decided to order a new Maxi for himself. He joked: "I will be
spending more money and winning fewer trophies, but it is very Genovese to
want to suffer a little when things are going well."

Second in Class 0 behind Grampus was the immaculately sailed Volvo 60
Nautor Challenge, which Grant Dalton and his team of hardened
round-the-world professionals had launched just a week before. "I was
impressed by the way our team combined on tactics and decision-making. Dee
Smith, Bouwe Bekking and Roger Nillson worked very well together," he
observed afterwards.

After setting down a new marker for round-the-world records aboard Club Med
earlier this year, the tough Kiwi has given himself a mountain to climb in
being ready for the Volvo Ocean Race this September, but he pointed out:
"We might be the last challenge to launch, but we are the first to compete
with our new boat in a race." Remarkably, Dalton said the Giraglia Race
would be the only competitive outing for the team before the beginning of
the Volvo Ocean Race itself. "The boys have been really busy in the boat
yard, working flat out, so we wanted to do this race to remember why we do
this sport. It was good to get out on the water."

While most crews let their hair down after the end of the race, Dalton and
his red-shirted crew barely had time to feed on some Yacht Club Italiano
pasta and red wine, before they were off again into the sunset - motoring
back to their base in La Ciotat in the western Mediterranean. After that
they get into some heavy two-boat testing in Spain.

So for Dalton and his boys, the Giraglia Race was a crucial opportunity to
test themselves under competitive conditions. For others, competing in the
Giraglia Race was an end in itself, one of the high points in the year for
the Maxis and other classes competing in the oldest offshore race in the
Mediterranean.

Top ten results on corrected time
Pos/Yacht/Owner/Type/Corrected time under IMS

1. Querida/ Gianluigi Serena/ Vismara 40/ 22:48:03
2. Imagine/ Gilles Argellies/ IMX-40/ 22:51:58

3. Fare Well/ Roger Pierrejean/ IMX-40/ 23:44:42

4. Sagarmatha/ Michel Tiberini/ IMX-40/ 24:15:01

5. La Mondiale-Magic Simca/ Laurent Lavaysse/ IMX-40/ 24:57:01

6. Grampus/ Carlo Puri Negri/ C&C 61/ 24:57:54

7. Isolaria/ Giorgio Mori/ First 47.7/ 25:13:04

8. Nautor Challenge/ Nautor/ Volvo 60/ 25:25:35

9. Chante L'Alize/ Francesco Santamaria/ X-562/ 25:49:35

10. Ex Nihilo/ Philippe Meyer/ X-562/ 25:53:05