I just returned from three weeks in Europe, doing two regattas, with a 10 day break in between. The first regatta was the Loro Piana in Sardina, and the second was the Superyacht Cup Palma. And rather than fly back and forth in between, I decided to take my honeymoon (5 years late), visiting Corsica and Italy with my sweetie Denise. All three were fantastic!

The Loro Piana was going to be our first race under IRC handicapping aboard P2, the Briand 125 that I campaign. A big line up of 30 boats, and challenging weather and courses around Porto Cervo in Sardinia. Day one started in 20-25 knots, and peaked at 36 knots on the beat to the finish. Everybody suffered breakdowns in these gear busting conditions, including a near fatal injury on one boat. We tore the tack strop out of our jib, but poked a knife through it and fashioned a temporary Cunningham good enough to sail with. Soon after in one of the biggest blasts our mainsheet system went. Luckily we have a back-up plan for most of our major systems and put the temporary mainsheet on and sheeted it to one of the runner winches. So we limped home, but finished 7^th, which was not too bad. The next two days were abandoned, one for too much wind, and the next for no wind. (That’s why I promote racing in the Caribbean!!). The final day was great conditions, 10-15 knots, and we were in a good position, until the wind shut down about 1 mile from the finish. The entire fleet parked up, until a new breeze arrived from the back and pushed everyone over the line within a few minutes, making the results a complete lottery. So no result to show for the regatta, but some good sailing by our team, lots of lessons learned, and a big work-list for the next event in 10 days.

I won’t take you through my honeymoon, but I will tell you that Corsica is lovely (great mountains, nice people, the size of Puerto Rico, but only 250k people), and Cinque Terre in Italy is wonderful.

The Superyacht Cup Palma saw three days of good racing in everything from 8 to 18 knots of their regular seabreeze. Some short legs that really challenged our team on this big yacht, but everyone did a great job. In the end our result was a 4, 2, 1, which put us in 3^rd, one point out of 1^st. But since this racing is under the Bucket rating system, and the weather dictates a lot of the results, we always score ourselves on how well we sailed, and for this regatta, I give our team an A+. The last race in particular was one of the best races we have ever sailed on P2 and is a testament to the good people on board, and the amount of training and effort everyone has put in.

Next up for me was to be CORK in Ireland mid July, but the campaign just had to cancel the event due to outside factors. This is a real pity because I was really looking forward to sailing at CORK, which has earned a reputation as one of the nicest events in the world. Instead I will enjoy some summer weather at home in the Caribbean, get caught up on projects around the house, and try to scare away any hurricanes that threaten for the next few weeks.

Ciao, peter