Day 1 Highlights – Capetown 52 Super Series Sailing Week, South Africa

Racing on their own home waters, Hasso Plattner’s Phoenix 11 made a dream start to the Odzala Discovery Camps 52 SUPER SERIES V&A Waterfront – Cape Town regatta, the first event of six that comprise the 2020 52 SUPER SERIES. Local knowledge and a protracted spell of training late last year and before this season’s curtain raiser played its part as Phoenix completed a textbook first race that they won comfortably. Then, after a less than perfect start to the second contest, Phoenix battled from the bottom third of the fleet to deliver a valuable third place finish. Plattner’s crew lead the regatta by two points from the 2019 champions Azzurra who returned a fourth and a second, a solid debut day for new tactician Michele Paoletti. In the south westerly breeze, which picked up to 16kts for the second start and averaged 10-13 kts for the day, conditions were not easy to read – consistency proving particularly elusive. Phoenix 11, the newer of the two Plattner family TP52s, were undoubtedly the class act delivering for the home support.