One hundred boats will compete in the J/70 class World Championship in Palma Bay

The competition will consist of five days and a pre-race training regatta.

The Real Club Náutico de Palma (RCNP) will organize the J70 class World Championship in which a hundred boats from 25 countries will participate in the regattas to be held from September 14 to 21 in Palma Bay.

The test of the most numerous one-design class in the world "will be one of the great events of 2024 for the club," said Manu Fraga, director of the RCNP.

"It will be a challenge because it is a very competitive fleet with very specific regulations such as single starts with 100 boats and managing the race field will not be easy," he added.

A fleet composed of 31 J70 class boats already competed in the last Copa del Rey Mapfre. With a total of 12 races, eight of them as qualifiers with a coefficient of 1 and the last four, as finals, with a coefficient of 1.5 points, the “Kimpton Hotels-Les Roches” of the owner Pepequín Orbaneja prevailed.

The J/70 class was born 11 years ago in the United States and is one of the most promising one-designs in the world. To date, 1,900 units have been built that are distributed across five continents. With only 6.93 meters in length and a maximum beam of 2.25 meters, the J/70 offers the performance of a "thoroughbred" and great ease of transport and rigging. Its crew can be made up of three or four people, depending on the weight of the crew members.

The teams best positioned in the bets to win the world championship come from the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Italy, and Argentina. The title is held by the British “Brutus III”, owned by Tom Mallindine and featuring Olympic sailor Ben Saxton as tactician. The team from the “Royal Southern YC” won authoritatively in the last edition at the St. Petersburg Yacht Club in Santa Monica, Florida (USA).

The Spanish fleet will include, among others, the “Patakín” (RCN Palma), by the Majorcan Luis Albert, winner of the last Copa del Rey and the only Spanish representative in the last world championship.