(Trieste, Italy)- The fourth act of the Italian J/70 Cup series took place off the beautiful, exotic eastern Italian Riviera on the Adriatic Sea off the port of Trieste, Italy. Hosting the twenty-boat, four nations fleet (Italy, Poland, Russia, & Switzerland) fleet was the YC Trieste based at Portopiccolo. The weather Godz were not cooperating at all for this season-ending finale, with just four races counting for the regatta and series totals.
Winning the final event was the Russian team on ARTTUBE RUS-1, skippered by the famous Russian woman helm- Valeria Kovalenko from the Taganrog Sailing Club. Considering the high-level of competition, she posted a remarkably steady scoreline of 1-5-5-2 for 13 pts total. Taking second was Luca Domenici’s NOTARO TEAM with a 4-4-2-6 tally for 16 pts. Third was Mauro Brescacin’s SOCIETE NAUTICA GIGNANO with a 15-2-1-3 for 21 pts total. In fact, tied on points at 21 with Brescacin’s team was the Russian crew of Dmitriy Shunin on GOLDEN WING, the Konakovo River Club team settling for 4th after countback. Fifth went to Gianfranco Noe’s CALVI NETWORK with a 12-10-4-1 tally for 27 pts.
The final results for the season series (Sanremo, Porto Ercole, Malcesine and Portopiccolo) show that it was the crew of CALVI NETWORK (Gianfranco Noè, Karlo Hmeljak, Giulio Desiderato, Irene Bezzi, Sergio Blosi) that won the 2018 Italian J/70 Cup- a 4 event, 26 race series, for the second consecutive year!
Gianfranco Noè, owner and driver of CALVI NETWORK, commented, "We could not hope for a better result: when at the beginning of the season we started planning, we said it would have been fantastic to put the seal on the circuit also winning the act of Trieste: this event was in fact particularly important for me because these are the waters where I was born and grew up as a sailor. It was a pity that there was no Enfant Terrible to duel with us until the end, because at the beginning of this leg, after twenty-two races, we were only divided by 5 points in the seasonal ranking".
Taking second overall for the series was the two-time European Champion, Claudia Rossi of PETITE TERRIBLE- ADRIA FERRIES.
The European Champions on ENFANT TERRIBLE-ADRIA FERRIES, led by skipper/ owner Alberto Rossi, did not participate in the last act of the circuit, but nevertheless closed the season in third position, thanks to the excellent placings scored during the season, including the victories in Sanremo and Porto Ercole.
LA FEMME TERRIBLE, with co-owners Paolo Tomsic and Mauro Brescacin, and crew of Emanuele Noè, Giuliano Chiandrussi and Francesca Pagan, won the Italian J/70 Cup Corinthians Division. The silver medal went to NOBERASCO DAS skippered by Alessandro Zampori and third place went to WHY NOT- #SLAM sailed by Alessio Zucchi. Sailing photo credits- Zerogradinord Follow Italian J/70 Cup on Facebook here For more Italian J/70 Cup sailing information Add to Flipboard Magazine.