After 2 days 13 hours 7 minutes and 18 seconds of racing, the Mach 40.5 IBSA (Alberto Bona, Luke Berry, Pablo Santurde del Arco and Luca Bertacchi) won the RORC Caribbean 600 2023. Just under 15 minutes later, Ambrogio Beccaria's Musa 40, Alla Grande Pirelli, crossed the line in second place. Axel Trehin and his crew (Project Rescue Ocean) completed the podium.
They said
Alberto Bona: "We had a good start, although we had some problems with other boats as the fleet was still compact. The first few tacks were quite difficult as expected. Then, once we passed Green Island, we hoisted the gennaker, set off and the race really started. We immediately got into the rhythm of the race. On the first tack under gennaker we were already in the leading group. We were in the lead in Barbuda.
Overall, the whole course was difficult. We knew that the most critical point would be the passage under Guadeloupe.
We arrived there after a long stretch between squalls and sail changes, the leading group was still compact. We lost a bit in this phase, as we arrived first in Guadeloupe, and came out third. It was a moment when we had to put the coal back in to catch up with the others.
I really appreciated the reaction of the crew: we reacted well, we didn't lose heart, we gave it our all and we made up for our deficit before Désirade. That was the moment when we decided to go and win the race.
It was a tiring regatta, with a lot of manoeuvres to do and in which we always stayed in contact with our direct opponents. We were able to try and check a lot of settings on the boat. I exchanged a lot of feelings with Luke who sailed the sistership. The whole team did a great job. Pablo is a war machine. He never stops, he really impressed me and I'm very happy to have to do more racing with him. Luca survived this adventure, he gave us a good hand on board."
Ambrogio Beccaria: " What an incredible start to the season! The RORC600 has been an exciting and fast-paced race from start to finish.
We gave it our all at the start and immediately found ourselves leading the Class40 fleet. Our boat held the lead until the island of Barbuda, but on the way back north we lost a few miles. From then on it was a neck and neck battle for first place. After passing Saint-Martin, we went down to the island of Saint-Barthélemy to reach Guadeloupe with average speeds still high, reaching peaks of twenty knots.
In the end, a fine second place! We fought all the time and battled until the last mile. We made a lot of good choices, but also a few mistakes; it may have penalised us slightly for not making good use of the extra sail we had.
Sailing with a crew you learn a lot and I already have a lot of ideas on how to optimise #AllaGrandePirelli which, although still very new, has proved to be very fast. I am very happy for my friend Alberto Bona and the IBSA team because they had a great race!"
General ranking : RORC Caribbean 600 - Class40
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