South Africa’s Team Shosholoza were back in the hunt again on Monday for a place in the semifinals after a clean, no-mistake start to finish victory over United Internet Team Germany in rising 12- to 15-knot breezes that saw plenty of action and drama among the other boats on the racecourse.
”What is significant is that we have been first to the windward mark in nine out of the 12 races sailed so far,” said captain Salvatore Sarno, founder and team MD. ”That is an incredible 75% record.
”We have had some bad luck with tricky wind shifts, shredded spinnakers and a broken spinnaker pole. Without these misfortunes we would have been sitting comfortably in the top four on the same level as Spain and ahead of Mascalzone and Sweden’s Victory Challenge.”
Team Shosholoza are tied for sixth place with Italy’s Mascalzone Latino Capitalia after two flights of races in round-robin two of the Louis Vuitton Cup. Sharing the top of the leader board so far are the United States’s BMW Oracle Racing and Italy’s Luna Rossa Challenge, followed by Emirates Team New Zealand (third), Spain’s Desafio Espanol (fourth) and Sweden’s Victory Challenge (fifth).
The win over Germany was a reassuring confidence booster for the South Africans after their bitter loss on Sunday when a broken spinnaker pole lost them a crucial race to Sweden’s Victory Challenge despite building a solid lead that they had held for three of the four legs of the race.
”It was a good day in that the boys made the German win look easy. We know it isn’t, but they did and they were good at it,” said sailing manager Paul Standbridge.
Once again it was a must-win match for Team Shosholoza, who were first to get away off the start line after a modest pre-start tussle that saw the two boats stall head to wind and then bear away into the classic circling position of the dial-up.
The Germans tried to push the South Africans up on the line, but Shosholoza got away to the right to immediately pull out a boat length. The German navigator was scanning RSA 83 with his special binoculars, which contain a built-in range finder, while Shosholoza’s Marc Lagesse had his laser gun out shooting for distance on the Germans as the South Africans continued to extend up the beat to swing around the first windward mark with a handsome, 28-second lead.
Shosholoza quickly pulled out a 154m advantage on the downwind run, stretching it to 207m at times while flying an asymmetrical spinnaker. The South Africans shot through the leeward gate 33 seconds ahead of the Germans and streaked off up the beat to port.
Once again they took advantage of stronger winds to the right to pull out leads confidently of more than 300m before triumphantly rounding the second windward mark more than a minute ahead.
The Germans were no obvious threat and Shosholoza RSA 83’s spinnaker was hoisted in a flourish for the final run to the finish. Shosholoza crossed the finish line first,
The jubilant South Africans could be seen using the team’s huge, 100kg-plus grinder Reinhardt Rauscher, albeit the youngest in the team at 21 years old, as a punch box as they crossed the line in high spirits.
Monday’s win was no less a victory for the Team Shosholoza build team, who worked through the night to repair the carbon-fibre spinnaker pole broken in the Swedish match on Sunday. — Sapa