DAY 1 - 44CUP PORTOROZ - LIGHT CHALLENGING OPENING TO 44CUP PORTOROZ WORLDS

An ultra-light onshore breeze at the 44Cup Portoroz World Championship should have made for a straightforward opening day to the high performance one design’s pinnacle event of the season. In fact it demonstrated how the nimble RC44 can race meaningfully in practically no wind, but still scores were high with all eight teams suffering at least one big result. Despite a seventh place in today’s opening round when they were late for the start line, Hugues Lepic’s Aleph Racing went on to post a 2-1 in today’s final two races leaving the French team, at the end of the first day two points ahead of a trio of boats: Nico Poons' Charisma, local hero Igor Lah on Ceeref powered by Hrastnik 1860 and Chris Bake's Team Aqua. After three races the mid-fleet remains close with second to seventh place separated by just four points.