The USA has won the Sardinia Cup off Porto Cervo. The event, originally initiated as a Mediterranean counterpart to the Admiral's Cup and as a marketing measure for the Aga Khan's Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, is still regarded as one of the most important team regattas in the world.
This year, the cup was sailed with two-boat teams. These were the Farr 40, which according to the class rules must be steered by the owner ("owner driver rule") and IMS yachts of different sizes, which were scored according to calculated time.
The Americans took first and second place in their classes with "Bambakou" (Farr 40, John Coumantaros) and "QQ7-Profit" (Vismara 41, Roberto Maffini), while the new Grand Soleil 44 "Giacomelli Sport" was the clear winner in the IMS group. The Judel/Vrolijk design had already achieved top results in various regattas (test and boatyard portrait in YACHT 22/02).
The German team consisting of the Farr 40 "Struntje light" (Dr Wolfgang Schäfer) and the IMX-45 "Noa" (Markus Wieser) only managed a disappointing eighth place out of ten participating nations. After all, German teams had already won the once extremely high-calibre event twice in both the team and individual rankings. In the class classification, "Struntje light" took fourth place, while "Noa" only managed eighth place.
The event was dominated for a long time by Team Nordsee. This consisted of the IMX-45 "Mean Machine" of Dutchman Peter de Ridder and the Farr 40 "Nela" of Michael Illbruck. In the end, however, they only managed bronze in the team classification, with Mike Illbruck steering his Farr to third place in class. This was preceded by disputes due to an unauthorised change of helmsman on "Nela", which meant that Mike Illbruck was unable to be on board on the first day of racing and did not hand over the wheel in accordance with the rules. The crew was fined 20 per cent for this.
Fridtjof Gunkel
Deputy Chief Editor YACHT
