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Spain. Breitling MedCup: Supermodel Eva Herzigova wishes Coutts, Brady & T52 Lexus crew good luck

Thursday, 20 July 2006

Event media:

Lucky mascots come in all shapes and forms, but Lexus revealed what must be the ultimate in shapely lucky charms this morning in Puerto Portals in the form of supermodel Eva Herzigova.

The Czech model paid a flying visit to the 21 boat TP 52 line up to say ‘hello boys’ and wish Russell Coutts, Gavin Brady and the rest of the crew of the Lexus TP52 owned by George Andreadis and Jaime Yllera the best of luck for the imminent Breitling MedCup TP52 regatta.

Eva took time out en route to Ibiza to hopefully add a winning magic to the Lexus.

“I understand Lexus has won the last three regattas here so I am hoping that I will with the combined talents of Paul Cayard and Russell Coutts forming the afterguard prove their lucky charm this time.” Eva smiled.

The 2006 Botin & Carkeek design was putting together some consistently good results towards the end of the last regatta in Castellon.

For this first Mallorcan regatta it will be Coutts as tactician and Gavin Brady steering. Alinghi strategist and multiple 470 world champion, Mallorcan Jordi Calafat joins Lexus on mainsheet Pirates of the Caribbean trimmer Ian Budgen rejoins the team after Volvo Ocean Race duties and is scheduled to sail the rest of the Breitling MedCup.

Lexus sailed yesterday and have done some more serious tuning work to the rig and Andreadis is hopeful that they will continue to improve here:

“We have been trying to get the equipment right and it has been going a little more slowly than we would have hoped, which is a bit of a disappointment. It is always hard to get the sails and rig to work best together but we hope we will be better here. We have made a few small changes, nothing major.” Explained Andreadis, “I am not sure but I think the differences between Warpath and us are mainly tuning differences.”

“It has been fantastic racing this season. The boats are very close as always, and it is good that last year’s boats are competitive too.”

As one of the prime movers in the circuit’s visit to Athens in September, George believes that the racing on the Saronic Gulf will be good:

“We have a very large part of the team who ran the Olympic regatta involved as the race committee and the Hellenic Offshore Racing Association have done a good job in preparing for the event.”

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Perfect Weekend – Paul Cayard

Travelling as much as I do, just sleeping in my own bed is part of my perfect weekend. Saturday, I get up pretty early. I’ll go for an hour-long run with Poppy, my yellow Labrador, on the hill where we live, Mount Tamalpais, near San Francisco. Then I’ll come home, make a cappuccino and read the paper.

View the entire article (Adobe Acrobat format – Acrobate Required)

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TP 52 Update

We managed to finish 5th in the last race of the Castellon TPO 52 regatta. It was a good placing, the only shame of it was that we were second at the first mark and should have stayed up there. We finished 9th over all out of 21 which is not what we had hoped for.

We struggled all week with the speed of the boat and earlier in the week with our tactics and starts. The fleet is very competitive and that makes it a good challenge. Getting a few key thing just a little be better will make our performance go up dramatically. We have a list of things to work on for the next regatta, mast tune, sail shapes being the biggest. We got two good starts and in the last two races and finsihed 5th in each of those races.

Warpath, which is our sistership, finished second in the regatta so we know we have the equipement to get there. The winner of the event was a boat called Siemens with Ian Walker and Dee Smith onboard, sponsored by that company, then Warpath which has Team New Zealands crew onboard sailing for Fred and Steve Howe, followed by Mean Machine which is steered by her owner,Peter De Ridder with Vasco Vascotto, skipper of Cap Italia onboard as tactician.

You can get all the results at http://www.transpac52.org/home.htm

The next regatta is in Porto Portals, (Palma) in about 10 days. I am not racing in that one. Gavin Brady and Russell Coutts will be in charge there. I will race the susequent event, Copa del Rey, also in Palma, in place of Russell.

Paul Cayard

Cayard Sailing Inc.

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TP-52 Update

Today was the “Offshore” race of the Castellon Serries. It was about 25 miles and really was just a bunch of 3 mile legs close to the shore.

Onboard Lexus Atalanti, we managed to have our best result so far in the series, a 5th. Mean Machine of Holland, with Pirates crew member Dirk de

Ridder onboard, won the race. They were very fast and sailed well. Warpath from San Diego was second and Fram, the King of Norway’s boat, was third.

The leader of the series going into today, a boat called Ono, finsihed 16th and dropped 5 places in the standings. As I said yesterday, the fleet is

very competitive and the boat that wins one race can be last in the next.

It seems that we are finally getting the tuning of our mast and sails sorted out a bit. Our speed, while not the fastest in the fleet, is very

comparable to most of the boats now. We had a good start today and managed to go mostly the right way.

Tomorrow there is one race to finish off this series. The next series is in Porto Portals (Palma de Mallorca) in ten days, but I am not racing in that

event.

On Sunday, I am finally going home to San Francisco for 20 days, before returning to Palma to race in the Copa del Rey onboard Atalanti.

Paul Cayard

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TP 52 Update-July 6th, 2006

Another tough day for us on Atalanti. I haven’t seen the results but they could not have been good for us. John Kostecki and the guys on Caixia Galaicia had a good day finishing second in one race. The wind was a bit softer than yesterday only just reaching 10 knots at its max.

The fleet is very competitive. Boats have won races then been 15th in the next race. Very tough to be consistent.

Tomorrow is the “Offshore” race. Maybe 30 miles. God knows I have been training fo this one. Let’s hope we do a bit better.

Paul Cayard

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TP-52 update July 5th, 2006

Today was the first day of the Castellón, TP-52 Regatta. This is the second regatta of the Mediterranean Season. It was a perfect day for sailing with winds of 10-13 knots from 080. We had three races today.

Onboard Atalanti/Lexus, we have a very good crew but we did not manage to do very well today. Russell Coutts is our helmsman and I am the tactician. Our best race was the first one in which we got 7th. From there we went downhill getting to 12ths. It looked like a combination of things, not very good starts, not very fast and not going the right way. This fleet is very competitive and tough so if you get that many things wrong you will not do very well.

The winners were a boat called Platoon in the first race, Bribon in the second and Caixia Galicia in the last race. The overall leader is a boat called Ono with 14 points, second is Warpath which is a US boat with Team New Zealand as the crew, and third is Mean Machine, a Dutch boat with my firend Dirk De Ridder onboard. We are in 9th over all with 31 points. Still a lot of racing left and if we can get out act straightened out we can move up the leader board. There were plenty of protests and some boats had damage.

Tomorrow there will be two windward/leeward races, like today, then Friday there will be a coastal race, probably 20-30 miles long, and then one more windward/leeward race on Saturday. There is no discard in this series.

Paul Cayard

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