TP52 Azzurra ready to begin the 52 Super Series Royal Cup in Cadiz

Azzurra - 52 Super Series Menorca © Martinez Studio / 52 Super Series

Tomorrow will see the start of the second event of the 2019 52 Super Series in Puerto Sherry in southern Spain. Races will be held in the waters off Cádiz and will also count towards the Royal Cup, a challenge trophy originally created in 1995 by King Harald of Norway, a passionate sailor, for the IMS 50 Class. This series of windward/leeward races will end Saturday June 22nd.

Eight TP52 teams including Azzurra are in Puerto Sherry ready to kick off the event tomorrow at 1:00PM after having had their Practice Race today. Azzurra has to harness all of her potential here after the first event in the 2019 season that saw her finish in fourth place overall, not on the podium, but not far behind the leading teams: Platoon, Provezza and Quantum. The potential is there, the Menorca 52 Super Series saw Azzurra get off to a great start with two bullets and a second place in the first three races, only to drop back in the following days. At any rate, on the final day of racing at that event she placed an encouraging second.

The level of talent in the fleet is uniformly high with many teams of top professionals counting years of experience in the 52 Super Series. Any team can win races and move up in the ranking. The 52 Super Series is won by that team that gets the best score overall calculated from the sum of all races run over the course of the season. There are no discards: every point counts and errors can come at a very high price in terms of ranking.

"We went out to train today," said skipper Guillermo Parada, "with a long list of mistakes that we don't want to make. We trained hard for this. In Menorca we dropped back overall because of errors, we don't want that to happen again. The boat is very fast and that is to our favour in getting results."

"Azzurra's team has shown their stuff in several occasions," said Riccardo Bonadeo, Commodore of the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda. "I want to thank the Roemmers family for their support in bringing this team and our burgee here to Puerto Sherry and I'm sure that the Royal Cup will be hard fought and thrilling to follow. Unfortunately, I can't be present because we are organising the Star Class world championship in Porto Cervo,but I will be following it online."

The weather forecast for the first part of the week calls for breeze from the south rotating to the southwest at 7 to 14 knots. Updates live from the course will be posted on Azzurra's Facebook page and the best shots will be on instagram.com/azzurrasailing.

More information at azzurra.it and 52superseries.com. Starting Thursday there will also be live streaming.