Ambrogio Beccaria - We can still win The Ocean Race Europe
by Ed Gorman / IMOCA Globe Series 16 Aug 16:24 BST
Ambrogio Beccaria, skipper of Allagrande Mapei Racing © Vincent Curutchet / The Ocean Race Europe
Ambrogio Beccaria's entry into the IMOCA Class has been eventful, highlighting the Italian skipper's resilience and determination. After being forced to retire from Leg 1 of The Ocean Race Europe following a collision at the start, he and his team on Allagrande MAPEI Racing have shown remarkable perseverance to get back in the race.
Along with Team Holcim-PRB they will now return for Leg 2 and both teams remain serious contenders. Indeed Beccaria, 33, with a successful background in Mini and Class 40 racing, believes his crew can still win The Ocean Race Europe overall.
"The approach for the rest of the race for us doesn't change at all because we think that in this kind of race anything can happen until the very end, because it is ocean racing and we know how it works," Beccaria told the Class while delivering his boat to Portsmouth from Kiel ready for the start of Leg 2 on Sunday afternoon.
"So we will be ready to fight on every point because we are here to do our best and actually every leg is a single race and we want to do well in every single race," he added.
In Cartagena, an international jury will assess the causes of the dramatic crash between Allagrande MAPEI Racing and Team Holcim-PRB just minutes after the start of Leg 1 from Kiel to Portsmouth, and potentially grant redress to either - or both - of the teams, depending on who is deemed principally responsible.
"I think we can still win this race," continued Beccaria, "because there is still the protest and a lot of the race will be on how the protest will end, but also why not? The next leg counts double points, there are a lot of possibilities and it's ocean racing. It's never finished until it's finished."
The damage to Beccaria's IMOCA was thought at first to be largely confined to a shredded headsail, but he and his team quickly realised they had to replace large parts of the starboard side standing rigging and a chainplate. Beccaria says there were moments of despair in Kiel when he thought they would have to abandon the race.
"I never had a collision with another boat like this before so, for sure, it was very hard to live through, especially because it is not only about you, but also the other boat. But actually what makes it easier is we have a very big team that did an incredible effort to prepare and solve all the problems," he said.
The Leg 2 start on Sunday will see all seven boats - Team Holcim-PRB will also have made it to Portsmouth in time after extensive hull repairs - set sail from the line off the Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes. Beccaria admits he will be feeling nervous as he takes the helm once more for what is likely to be another fast start in fresh conditions.
Leg 2 should be a fascinating one to follow as the crews sail 1,400 nautical miles to Cartagena via a "fly-by" stopover at Matosinhos in Portugal. There are big headlands to get round - Cape Finisterre and Cape St Vincent among them - and the entrance to the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar is often difficult. Although the exit of the English Channel looks fast, Beccaria says the weather is complex.
"While the strategy on the first leg seemed quite easy to understand...this one is a lot more complicated because there are two big transitions before (Matosinhos) and, at this moment, it seems quite impossible to understand which will be our route. So for the moment it is very, very complicated," he said.
On rival IMOCA Canada Ocean Racing-Be Water Positive, the British sailor Pip Hare, who the team describes as the "person in charge" for Leg 2 is relishing the weather scenario.
"Well, it looks like a beauty from our point of view - it's absolutely lush," enthused Hare, who will be sailing the former 11th Hour Racing Mãlama, and then Groupe Dubreuil, alongside Christopher Pratt and Sébastien Marsset of France and the British veteran Brian Thompson. "It's amazing downwind conditions and the seastate looks pretty flat. I think it's going to be fast, but what we think at the moment is that you have to be fast to avoid getting left behind because, as you get towards the Med, there is going to be a bit of a transition and it will definitely be a bit of a cut-off there. So we are going to be pedal-to-the-metal and just making sure we keep the pace."
Hare was pleased with the Leg 1 performance from this team - they finished fourth having never raced the boat together before. But there were lessons learned from that experience that they want to take forward. "We felt very much that this is a heavy boat compared to the others and so sometimes we struggled in lighter airs with the early flight which is hard for us," explained Hare. "We recognise that in the early stages, we need to work on powering up as much as we can, and we need to fully lean into the higher-end sail ranges to really try and maximise the power. We also realised that the pace of this race and its intensity means it is quite easy to get fatigued, so we need to be a bit more regimented with our watch keeping and our sleeping."
Hare certainly isn't accepting that this team and boat - which is back on its first set of foils - will struggle to make the top-half of the fleet. "We are racing the top-end of the fleet and our aspiration is to get closer and closer to them and finally pick a couple of them off at the end. We're only going to get better," she said.