The Cervantes Trophy Race, a 115nm race from Cowes to Le Havre and back, is the 3rd event on the RORC 2007 racing schedule and this year greeted the fleet with mostly medium to light conditions except for at the end when the small boats finished in a freshening breeze. Charles Ivill’s J/133 JB 3 won the 15 boat IRC 0 class earning them the Thalassa Cup with Martin Richmond-Coggan’s J/133 Jump finishing in second place.Philippe Delaporte, owner of J/122 Pen Azen, topped the 25 boat class in IRC 1 taking home the Noryema VII Cup. He sent along this brief report:
“Cervantes trophy was a great race for us. The course was 115 miles long. After 2 hours of racing going to windward out of the Solent we were among Class O and super O, TP 52 and Farr 52 ahead of Farr 45, DK 46 & Ker 46. The wind was 11 knots. Then while crossing the Channel, the wind shifted and decreased to 2 knots during the afternoon. During the evening it went back to 5-6 knots and Pen Azen crossed the line at 3 o'clock in the morning. At that time we were hoping for an overall IRC win but the wind increased to 10 and later 15 knots and so the small classes finished very fast… frustrating us from the overall victory.”
Other notable J/Boat finishes were Nick Martin & Mike West each sailing their J/105s in the Two-Handed division and finishing 2nd & 3rd for the race. results
