HM Hospitales reinforces its leadership in the ORC1 class

The ORC1 class is once again the great focus of attention at the 40th Copa del Rey Mapfre, the great Mediterranean sailing competition organized by the Real Club Náutico de Palma since 1982.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
02 August 2022 Tuesday 12:50
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HM Hospitales reinforces its leadership in the ORC1 class

The ORC1 class is once again the great focus of attention at the 40th Copa del Rey Mapfre, the great Mediterranean sailing competition organized by the Real Club Náutico de Palma since 1982. The battle between unequal boats in this class, which compete with the time compensation system, provides very exciting days depending on the wind and sea conditions that occur in the bay of Palma.

This Tuesday the scenario of Monday was practically repeated, with a little less wind, around 12 knots, from the SW, and the three DK46 sailboats that take part in this class took control of the provisional classification.

HM Hospitales, owned by Alexandre Laplaza and Oscar Chaves, which has Carles Rodríguez as its patron, is the leader. He has won two of the four races held and although he finished seventh in the first race of the day, he did not spoil his overall balance. He adds 12 points.

Second is Estrella Damm, led by Luis Martínez Doreste, who takes advantage of a good regularity while preparing improvements to the boat. He made two third-place finishes this Tuesday and his tally is 15 points.

And third is Jaime Colsa's Palibex, which has the award-winning Cantabrian sailor José María Pichu Torcida as helmsman, who finished second and fourth on this second day and has 16 points. The three sailboats are the same and are the ideal type of boat to compete in the Copa del Rey Mapfre when the wind in the bay of Palma does not exceed 14 knots and there are hardly any waves, statistically common circumstances in recent years.

In fact, HM Hospitales is the sailboat that has already won four Copas del Rey Mapfre in recent years, with different names and different crews. She won a trophy as Maserati, two as Estrella Damm and one, last year, as Hydra. The team from the Catalan brewery, which last year competed with a new XP 50, was overtaken by its old boat, in the hands of other competitors, and in this 2022 it has taken another DK46 to try to win again.

In front of the DK46s, there are two larger and faster TP52s, which, due to time offsets, must cross the finish line before their rivals. They are the Aifos of the Spanish Navy, skippered by King Felipe, and the Red Bandit of the German Carl-Peter Forster, which carries a crew of young people from the Bayerischer Yacht Club, the oldest and largest yacht club in southern Germany, based at Lake Starnberger, whom he wants to train to take part in major international regattas, including ocean races.

At the moment, this enthusiastic crew carries the penalty suffered on the first day, in the first regatta, which charged them with 19 points, but of the other three races they have won two and finished fifth in the second on Tuesday. They are sixth in the standings with a total of 26 points.

The Aifos could not count on King Felipe at the helm, since the Head of State received the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in an audience in Marivent. His place at the helm was taken by Admiral Jaime Rodríguez-Toubes and the Navy sailboat added a fifth and sixth place. She is fifth with 20 points.

In the middle of this battle between the three DK46s and the two TP52s is Fernando Chain's Argentinian From Now On, a Swan 45 who came second in this class, ORC1, last year. He now occupies provisional fourth place with 18 points, after finishing third, ninth, fourth and second.

In a certain sense, the From Now On has inherited the role of Rafael Carbonell's Rats on Fire, another Swan 45 that won five Copas del Rey and that became the reference of the competition cruiser in Spain. The Rats on Fire has not attended this 40th edition of the Copa del Rey Mapfre due to Carbonell's illness and he and his crew are missed, at sea and on land.

In the ORC2 class, the dominance of Javier Banderas' Teatro Soho Caixabank, which leads Daniel Cuevas as helmsman and Luis Doreste as tactician, is beginning to be incontestable after the two disputed days. They have won three of the four races and in the other they tied with Katarina II, which is second overall. Third is the Rivareno Gelato-Elena Nova, by Christian Plump and Javier Sanz, the president of the Royal Spanish Sailing Federation (RFEV).

In the Swan 50 one-design class, which is another of the great attractions of this Copa del Rey Mapfre, Hendrik Brandis's Earlybird, a classic of the competitions in the bay of Palma, has already taken second place, tied with the first, Stefan Heidenreich's Onegroup, after making two second places and thus compensating for the 11 they added in the first test on Monday. Fourth is Pablo Garriga from Barcelona, ​​the only Spaniard in this class in which the owners are also the helmsmen of the sailboats.

The premiere of the Herbalife J70 class resulted in three different winners. The best of the day was the 2021 champion, Juan Calvo's Let it Be, who begins the defense of his title with a two-point advantage over Jorge Martínez Doreste's Bodega Can Marles and three over Gustavo Martínez Doreste's Alcaidesa Marina.

The competition format of the 40 Copa del Rey Mapfre is divided into a preliminary series and a final series. The first ends this Wednesday and will decide the points with which each team begins the final from Thursday. The final series will be decided by a maximum of five heats for all classes except J70 and J80, who may compete up to eight.