La Larga de PalmaVela crowns the winners of its fourth edition

From the early hours of Monday morning, 29th of April, the conditions have not made things easy for the ORC 0-1 fleet, which at dawn still had practically all the teams racing the last miles of the regatta.

With almost no wind on the last approach to Cala Figuera, the end of La Larga was agonizing for many of the crews, and the truth is that at 16:00 hours there were still two boats to cross the finish line.

Torben Muhlbach's ‘Stoertebeker’ was the fastest from the moment of the start in the bay of Palma, managing to escape quickly from the rest of the fleet from the first obligatory crossing point in Cabrera.

Finally, after 38 hours and 15 minutes of sailing, the German carkeek 47 crossed the finish line early this morning at 02:20 hours, with a wide lead over its pursuers - more than five hours on corrected time - and scored a well-deserved victory in La Larga.

Behind them, second place this year went to Joaquín Verona's ‘Intrigue’, which crossed the finish line at around midday on Monday, and third place went to Valentín Oreu's ‘Lion's Story’.

‘It was a complete race. We had two broken genoas and variable winds. The passage through Cabrera, where the whole fleet came together, was complicated and the rest of the regatta was with little wind until we passed Es Vedrá in Ibiza, which was a nice upwind leg with northerly winds", said the tactician of “Intrigue”, Iñaki Castañer. 

In the ORC 2-5 category, Diego Colón's ‘Gudrun VIII’ was the first to finish La Larga at around 22:45 on Sunday. With a time of 34 hours and 28 minutes, the local team managed to take second place overall after the time compensation.

The big winner in this category was José Antonio Martín's ‘Huayra’, which crossed the finish line after midnight after 35 hours and 58 minutes of sailing, achieving an advantage of two minutes and 44 seconds in corrected time over the team from Colón. Dave Butters' ‘Joy’ closed the podium in third place.

The teams competing in the A2 0-3 category were the fastest of the edition. The first in real time was Tito Moure's ‘Smerit’ with a time of 29 hours and 35 minutes, although the title on this occasion went to Daniel Martín's ‘Barakah’. Martín's ‘Fígaro 2’, with ocean sailor Didac Costa as team mate, crossed the finish line some two hours later, achieving a distance of almost an hour on corrected time over ‘Smerit’. Third place went to José Juan Torres' ‘Histolab’ from the RCNP.

And in A2 4-5 the victory of the prologue offshore race of the 20th PalmaVela was won by Glenn de Brouwe's ‘Diabolic’. Although the Belgian team was the last to cross the finish line of the five that make up its category, the compensation of times and the distance of less than an hour with its competitors allowed ‘Diabolic’ to secure a victory with more than seven minutes advantage in corrected time over Toni Pons' ‘Chica Txeca’ and 25 minutes over Christian Teichmann's ‘Velaroja’, second and third respectively.