Nanny Cay’s Peg Leg Landing, with the azure waters of the BVI’s St Francis Drake Channel gently lapping at the sand just a few feet away, seems a fitting place for Team Aqua’s skipper, RC44 Class Association President Chris Bake to assess the season and look forward to the next.
While temperatures plummet in northern Europe and the US, the Caribbean is the best antidote and, if the searing heat gets too much, there is always the apparent wind aboard an RC44 or a rum punch to help cool down.
The 2024 season started off with Vladimir Prosikhin’s Team Nika, led by tactician Nic Asher, making a statement of intention, winning the 44Cup Calero Marinas in Lanzarote’s Puerto Calero in early March. It was also great to see old friends of the class, the Calero family, back competing, with younger son Daniel leading a largely Spanish crew including tactician Alfredo Gonzalez, Lanzarote’s own Snipe World Champion. Calero Sailing Team not only competed in their event but the next too and it is hoped they will return to the 44Cup more permanently.
The 44Cup visited three new venues in 2024. The first of these was Baiona, in Spain’s Galicia region, just 15km north of the Portugese border. While familiar to 52 Super Series sailors, it was the first time the 44Cup had visited, hosted by the prestigious Monte Real Club de Yates de Baiona (MRCYB). Here Torbjörn Törnqvist’s Artemis Racing won, now with Hamish Pepper calling tactics (the first time since 2016 that the Swedish team had won a 44Cup event).
Artemis Racing hosted the 44Cup in Marstrand, the popular holiday hotspot and sailing venue on Sweden’s west coast. This was won by the 44Cup’s defending champions, Nico Poons’ Charisma, while especially memorable was the epic summer solstice party held in Marstrand’s Societetshuset, that will go down as one of the class’ most enjoyable of social events.
From there the 44Cup moved south and inland with the 44Cup World Championship in Brunnen, Switzerland, hosted by Christian Zuerrer and his Black Star Sailing Team. Racing took place on Lake Uri (Lake Lucerne), the first time the RC44s have competed on a lake since Lake Traunsee, Austria in 2012. The social side in Brunnen was superb, with the entire 44Cup family taken on a tour of the lake with dinner aboard a classic paddlesteamer, followed by a firework display. Surrounded by alpine peaks, Lake Uri provided not just a superb setting but also the full range of wind conditions. Here Team Nika was back on top, claiming their fourth World Championship title.
The season concluded with the 44Cup Nanny Cay, the third occasion the class has visited the British Virgin Islands. However since the last time in 2015, Hurricane Irma has decimated the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda’s clubhouse on Virgin Gorda. Thus in 2024, our event host was the Nanny Cay resort and marina on Tortola, a venue which annually hosts the BVI Spring Regatta and Sailing Festival. The concluding event saw another first – Pietro Loro Piana enjoying his inaugural event win helming Hugues Lepic’s Team Aleph, while Team Nika was confirmed as 2024 44Cup winner ahead of Igor Lah’s Team CEEREF Vaider.
Looking back at 2024, Chris Bake muses: “Brunnen - the first lake sailing event we’ve done in a while - was really successful. And I think Christian [Zuerrer] did a really nice job with the class in keeping us entertained there. Then coming here [to the BVI] at this time of year has been magical.”
Through Bake’s instigation and with no sea breeze for which to wait in the BVI, the racing started daily an hour earlier. “With the wind coming a little earlier, I thought we should be flexible with timing. It is definitely nice to see some of the spots in the afternoon and do some swimming and other stuff,” he explained, something which may be adopted more in gradient breeze conditions in the future.
During 2024, the 44Cup continued its ‘black boat’ program, that has allowed teams to try out and see if they liked the 44Cup and its owner-driver one design racing – that provides yacht racing at the very highest level for a fraction of the cost of box rule classes.
Bake feels the class and the 44Cup is on positive trajectory. 2024 has seen two teams – John Bassadone’s Peninsula Racing (#29) and his own Team Aqua (#28) - receiving brand new RC44 boats from Pauger Carbon Composites in Hungary.
While in other classes, boats may be made of glass and become flexible over time, the RC44s are all robustly built in carbon fibre. Because of this, and their removable/sacrificial bow and stern, the boats themselves are in very good shape and can still maintain full rig tension, etc while being rigorously kept in one design trim. Their longevity is best demonstrated by Team Nika and Team CEEREF Vaider topping the 2024 44Cup leaderboard despite being the two oldest boats in the fleet, both launched in 2008.
The previous Peninsula Racing and Team Aqua boats are now available as turnkey, ready-to-race projects enabling any new owners to join the 44Cup at a moment’s notice. “It would be great to see two new owners on board,” says Bake. A third new RC44 is currently in build and will join the fleet in 2025.
While the new boats are winning races (both won at the 44Cup Nanny Cay, Team Aqua even claimed three bullets), they have taken a while to get up to speed. “Even though they are one designs they have their idiosyncrasies,” Bake explains. “So is it a slam-dunk? No - definitely not! Is it a ton of work? Yes! The shore crews of both boats have put in countless hours to get them up and running. Part of it was down to the builders who made the first generation boats having all left… So the moulds are there, but how they all fit together is a bit different. And took a while to get all the system to work perfectly.”
According to Bake any noticeable variations between old and new boats are scant: “In performance terms, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. Maybe in certain conditions… The wheel feels a little different because there’s a different quadrant and a different linkage and perhaps there’s a little less resistance. But is the boat fundamentally different? Not at all.”
So why get a new boat? “I had no intention of buying a new boat, but everyone who came said ‘we are not going to wait a year and a half for a new boat’. In order to try and create some liquidity John [Bassadone], myself and Torbjörn [Törnqvist] agreed to buy the new boats. There is no compelling reason to buy a new boat other than it is a way of feeding the class with quality secondhand boats. All of them are fine – their carbon is still strong.”
The new Harken winch package with which all the 44Cup RC44s were retrofitted, has also proved a success. “From a progress point of view, the technical upgrades we have done have put the boats in a good position for the next few years at least,” Bake continues. “I think we have got as much as performance out of them as we can and that is powerful. With the new boats – using the electric engine, we still have to sort out the drive train a little. But for the rest…I think the format is comfortable and the team environment off the water is very good. On the water everyone has been focussed on these boats for so long, it is very competitive. It feels like we have positive trajectory.”
As to next season Bake is excited. This starts off with a return to the BVI and Nanny Cay and perhaps developing the earlier race schedule some more. One idea is to finish a race off the notorious Willy T’s floating bar off Norman Island. Back in Europe, racing resumes in Porto Cervo, Sardinia, another of sailing’s greatest venues, before heading north to Marstrand and then back down to the Netherlands with racing on the North Sea, before concluding the season in the Canary Islands.
Meanwhile the 44Cup owners continue to enjoy it, most now very old friends. As Bake puts it: “I’ve known Vladimir [Prosikhin, Team Nika’s owner] since 2009. I have seen his kids grown up.” And this is much the case between them all, with newer faces such as Pietro Loro Piana and Christian Zuerrer fitting right in too.
“Overall, the RC44 class is in decent shape,” Bake concludes.