11 October 2022
After
two days of preparation and measurement, racing is ready to start
tomorrow for the 2022 ORC Sportboat European Championship being held
at the Diporto Nautico Sistiana. Twenty-one teams from six nations
have come to compete in two divisions, A and B. They represent
mostly popular series-built designs that are raced throughout
Europe. Examples include the 7 Melges 24's entered from Italy,
Slovenia and Spain, three Italian Este 24's and three Italian Ufo
22's. These are from established classes sailed for many years as
one-designs. Others are custom or semi-custom designs, with all
having been measured using the ORC Sportboat rules and and rated
with the ORC VPP.There are a couple of relatively new designs from designer Matteo Polli featured here in Sistiana this week. One is Ott Kikkas's Corsa 915 SUGAR from Estonia built by Magnani in Italy and raced by members of his 2022 ORC Class C World Championship team.
The other is Fabio Bignolini's new Eco Racer 25 ECORACER BY NMG EUROPE (shown above) built by Northern Light Composites, also in Italy. This innovative design is the first fully recyclable flax fiber boat in the world. Bignolini and team made a strong impression by winning today's practice race, but only by 3 seconds in corrected time over Ugo Guarnieri's veteran Delta 84 CHARDONNAY, a past champion at this event.
Racing starts tomorrow with a Coastal race of 21.8 miles held offshore of the venue at Sistiana in the northern Adriatic, followed on Thursday through Saturday with a series of short inshore windward/leeward races. These shorter races will be about an hour's duration will also be held off the coast of Sistiana.
"We are pleased to have a strong and diverse group of entries from a wide number of countries at this year's ORC Sportboat European Championship," said Bruno Finzi, Chairman of ORC. "This helps show that our rule system can provide confidence for fair racing in these boat types as well as with larger monohulls, multihulls and Superyachts we well."
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