The Rolex Swan Cup is at the starting line
As many as 101 boats registered for the biennial regatta organized by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda
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The Rolex Swan Cup, a biennial event now in its 22nd edition, will kick off today, Tuesday 17 September, with racing on a course that promises to be spectacular. Yesterday, the Skipper's briefing and Welcome cocktail on the terrace of the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda with the owners of the Nautor Swan yachts and their crews. There are 101 boats from the Finnish shipyard registered for this new edition, as always organized by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda with the support of Rolex in collaboration with Nautor Swan. In particular, this year we are celebrating 40 years of partnership: it was in fact 1984 when the Swan Cup, on the occasion of the third edition, took on its current name.
The Rolex Swan Cup is a regatta with a dual soul, the racing one, with the ClubSwan One Design range, and the one more oriented towards long-distance sailing, with heritage models up to the most modern blue water cruisers and maxis. A total of 101 boats gathered on the docks in front of the YCCS, a composite fleet that ranges from models of the past to the most recent maxis. They range from the 36-foot German Isabella to the 65-foot Dutch King's Legend, which came second in the 1977-78 Whitbread Round the World Race, to the modern 30-metre Swan 98 Drifter Cube, the largest yacht present in Porto Cervo.
The owners' approaches to the Rolex Swan Cup are equally different: on the docks of Porto Cervo, crews of family or friends meet with the great international names in sailing, from Vasco Vascotto to Paul Cayard, to name just two. While crews come to Porto Cervo from all over the world, most of the boats come from Europe, but it is worth highlighting the presence of competitors from Asia, America, Australia and even Africa: two Japanese owners (ClubSwan 28 Swing and Swan 68 Defiance), two from Australia (S&S 65 Eve and Swan 53 Bedouin), one from the USA (ClubSwan 28 Play Bigger), one from Argentina (Swan 45 mod. From Now On), one from India (Swan 58 Aquarius) to which is added the Egyptian owner of the ClubSwan 36 Lady Ghada.
The novelty is the debut in Porto Cervo of the ClubSwan 28, a one-design sportboat of just 8.5 metres, the smallest model ever built by the shipyard. There are 5 boats present at the 22nd Rolex Swan Cup that will race together for the first time. The ClubSwan 28 has also attracted interest from owners who already own larger models, as is the case with Anya Race and Django. Owner Giulio Gatti already owns the Swan 48 Anya, while YCCS member Giovanni Lombardi Stronati, who races on the ClubSwan 50 Django, has also purchased a 28 with the same name for his children. The 28s will race on windward-leeward courses, as will the ClubSwan 36s, with 7 yachts registered. The Swan One Design Division groups together all the boats with a racing soul: in addition to the 28 and 36 it includes the larger models: ClubSwan 42, Swan 45 and ClubSwan 50 present with 4, 6 and 13 competitors respectively.
For these last three models, windward-leeward races are planned, as well as a coastal race around the islands of the La Maddalena Archipelago. The Swan Maxi Division A has 15 entries, including the 82' Kallima Randstad with Paul Cayard, Tommaso Chieffi and Federico Michetti, director of sports activities for Nautor Swan, on board. The 13 heritage boats present in Porto Cervo, all designed by the Sparkman & Stephens studio, are part of the Swan S&S Division B. The Swan Division C is the largest, with 29 competitors. Racing begins today at 12:00 with a forecast of north-east winds of between 11 and 18 knots, while for the rest of the week the wind is expected to drop and rotate towards the east. The Rolex Swan Cup will conclude on September 21st after 5 days of racing. A new opportunity for the Island of great tourist promotion: the images of the regattas will go around the world and the presence of so many prestigious crews, extraordinary boats and great international sailing champions acts as an attraction for the public of enthusiasts, who have been arriving from everywhere since last week on the occasion of the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup.
LP
