Superyacht Cup Palma 2019: Curtain up on Europe's oldest superyacht regatta

It will be a feast for all sailing senses, which will be enjoyed not only by the Spanish hosts and their fans, but also by the first German summer holidaymakers who are already on holiday in Mallorca: 13 of the world's most beautiful sailing yachts will start the three-day Superyacht Cup Palma 2019 on Thursday. The 23rd edition of Europe's oldest superyacht regatta has attracted impressive boats such as the 52-metre schooner "Meteor", the 30-metre-long noble Wally "Open Season" and the J-beauties "Topaz" and "Velsheda" to the starting line. The Yawl "Bequia", the 32-metre Swan "Child of Lir", the 40-metre Langan design "Huckleberry" and Superyacht Design Award winner "Kealoha" will be on display. Also in the running: the 33-metre McKeon design "Missy", the Reichel-Pugh creation "Nilaya", the almost 25-metre-long Swan "Stay Calm", the modern 26-metre-long Frers design "Tulip" and the 33-metre-long "Win Win" from the pen of Mallorcan designer Javier Jaudenes.

Lined up end to end, the result is a total length of almost 450 metres of impressive, albeit very different sailing yachts. On the one hand, there are the modern racers such as the "Open Season" (ex-"Hamilton"), which was launched in 2012, built by Green Marine and underwent another extensive refit in 2015. On the other hand, schooners such as the largest boat in the fleet: the clipper-like Dykstra-Alden design "Meteor" was completed at Royal Huisman in 2007 and immediately won three prizes at the 2018 World Superyacht Awards the following year. The defending champion in this edition is "Velsheda". The classic from 1933 was named after the three daughters of the first owner William Stephenson: Velma, Sheila and Daphne - each given a few letters of their name.

The day before the first impressive meeting of the picture-book fleet, top photographer Jesus Renedo was one of the guests on board the "Topaz" with skipper Peter Holmberg. Even the very experienced yacht photographer was moved: "It was a fantastic day! What a yacht!" The Spaniard has already published his first pictures. From Thursday, the Pantaenius Race on the course off Palma will be tighter and more exciting than in training.

While final preparations were underway in the harbour of Palma, word spread that the New Zealand hosts were planning some spectacular superyacht regattas around their America's Cup defence in 2021, including races for the J-Class. The NZ Millennium Cup Superyacht Regatta will kick off a long series from 29 January to 1 February 2020 in the legendary Bay of Islands.

Here to the class classification of the Superyacht Cup Palma 2019.

Here to see the results from Thursday evening.