Svea find more joy in Ibiza

The well drilled Svea team continued their winning ways when the Swedish flagged recent winners of the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup raced against Topaz under the J Class Association rule last week at the third edition of Ibiza JoySail.

Over four days, Wednesday to Saturday, the pair of J Class yachts lined up over three races contested in very light winds.  Svea, with co-owner Niklas Zennström steering, Bouwe Bekking on tactics and Steve Hayles as navigator, won all three contests.

Wednesday saw one windward-leeward completed. A second was started but the light breeze evaporated to a light zephyr and it was abandoned. Thursday proved to be too light for racing despite best efforts to find a raceable wind. Friday and Saturday saw coastal races of between eight and 9.2 miles.

“We got a reasonable number of races in. It was good to sail in the lighter breezes in sub 6 /sub 7 knot wind, to learn how to handle these boats which is a learning curve for us. We learned more about the rig set up, manoeuvring, how you turn the boat in these conditions, just learning the whole package really. It is very different to how these boats handle in 12 knots of wind. There are lots of little things you don’t know until you have done them. And we have not done very much light airs sailing this year so it was all good,” said Tim Powell, Svea’s project manager. He added, “It was a really good event with a very good shoreside hospitality area, it was well run, it was an enjoyable regatta all round. As the final regatta of the season it was good fun and we had a great end of season dinner together.”

Tim Kroeger, project manager for Topaz said the event was well run, “The organisation on the water by Pablo Ferrer was well done, well executed, unfortunately we did not get much breeze, but they tried hard and made the right decisions at the right time. Of course we were racing in 5 to 7knots which is a bit of a shame, but at least we got three races in.”