Two victories in 13 rounds took Ladycat powered by Spindrift racing to a second place in the GP Les Ambassadeurs, the first round of the D35 Championship, at the Société Nautique de Genève on Lake Geneva this weekend.
The final analysis was very positive, with Ladycat finishing just three points behind the winner Alinghi and one point ahead of Mobimo overall.
On Friday, the D35 fleet had five races in a rather capricious wind of between 7 and 10 knots. After a good first day of competition for Ladycat, they were first in the overall rankings.
On Saturday, the wind picked up to between 15 and 18 knots, which allowed the race committee to schedule six races. At the end of the day the top four (Alinghi, Ladycat, Mobimo and Realstone) were still tightly bunched.
The podium was only decided Sunday May 11. After two races in strong, gusty wind blowing between 8 and 23 knots, Ladycat held onto second place on the podium. It was a very positive warm-up for the whole Ladycat and Spindrift racing team. "The first day was great and the following days the wind was more unstable in intensity and we had a little more difficulty in manoeuvring,” Guichard said. “But that is normal, because although we have lots of experience individually, we are a new team and we have to keep working together on our manoeuvres and coordination. We only had six days of training and none in any breeze and if you want to be in the mix you have to do all your manoeuvres perfectly. The level has gone up again and you could see that there were four standout teams straightaway at the first grand prix. I really enjoyed helming and it's so encouraging to start with a podium, but we are going to have to keep pushing to stay amongst the leaders in the next regattas."
