The Tommy Hilfiger Sailing Team raced in the second event of the Extreme 40 iShares Cup on July 7 – 9. The Tommy team in Marseille was comprised of Americans Jonathon Farrar and myself, and the Dutch duo of Mark van Gelderen and Ed van Lierde. Ed was a new addition to the Tommy Team.  But he brought with him experience on the bow of big boats such as the Volvo 70 Brunel, and the TP 52 Mean Machine. The Tommy team struggled a bit at this event, finishing 5 out of 7 boats. We had poor boatspeed throughout the event, due to some boat set-up issues which we were unable to resolve over the three day regatta. We did improve as the event went on, and had some decent races on the final day of the event, but this was not enough to overcome poor scores early on in the regatta.
After light air and sometime random shifts on the first day of the event, Marseille offered up excellent sailing on the latter two days of the regatta. The wind peaked over 20 knots on both Saturday and Sunday, and the tightly packed fleet of 7 boats had some spectacular mark roundings in the heavy air.Â
For the second regatta in a row, the Basilica Team was victorious, winning handily. Basilica is helmed by ABN AMRO veteran Rob Greenhaulgh, and also includes his brother Peter Greenhaulgh, Justin Slattery, and James Grant. Second place went to the legendary French trimaran team Groupama, led by Frank Camas.
The next event for the iShares Cup will be held at Cowes week on August 3-5. This will be one to follow for sure, as it will be the first time these state of the art boats race at the historic regatta, which has a great reputation for excellent sailing conditions. More information can be found at www.extreme40.org.
During the event, the Tommy Sailing Team did a couple of photo shoots for the company which required us to dress up in suits. Our fellow competitors found it a bit odd when we showed up to the competitors meeting on the final day of sailing dressed in suits, but the photos came out well.
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Original post by Stan and software by Elliott Back