Finally the wind made a brief show at the ICCT. Probably the high temperature,
around 30 Celsius degrees, pushed the thermal to materialise. The best was
between 12,30 and 2 p.m. during the third and final Defenders' Round Robin,
when it blew at 8 to 10 knots, allowing the boats to fly a hull upwind with the
crew double trapezing.
Today the Challengers had the worse part, first in the morning, when they
completed thier second and final Round Robin and after in the afternoon when
the best fought in the Semifinal and Final flights.
This was the situation at the end of the Elimination series:


Defenders
J. Lovell/C. Ogletree 6 wins and 0 losses
M. Murray/ A. Efre-Perez 3-3
M. Batcchelor/ R. Batchelor 0-6
with the first two qualified for the Defenders' Final


Challengers
D. Saragoni/ T. Di Battista 10-0
M. Monti/ F. Raffaelli 5-5
P. Gori /L. Filippi 5-5
M. Morelli/ A. Brolli 5-5
G. Mughetti / G. Casadei 4-6
M. Giannini/ J. Cooper 1-9
with the first four qualified for the Semifinal.
Saragoni chose Gori as opponent in the Semifinal and therefore Monti had to
compete with Morelli.
In the Seminals sargoni prevailed easily over Gori 2-0 while Monti was able to
defeat Morelli having lost the first match.
Then the Final match was Saragoni/Di Battista, who won their right to compete
with the perfect score (12-0), vs Monti/Raffaelli (7-6), the two best placed
teams also in the International 18HT Championship.
At the time of the fisrt start of the Final, to be raced at the best of 5, the
wind had eased to 4 to 6 knots, making difficult the prestart manouvering.
Anyway in the first two races Saragoni was able to win the start and keep the
lead easily until the end, mantaining a loose covering over Monti.
However in the prestart operations of the third and possibly decisive race,
Monti starting at the buoy succeeded to give a penalty to Saragoni.He started
on the starboard tack and didn't care to cover Saragoni, who saw better
pressure on the right and went there.
When both boats reached their opposite laylines Saragoni had already
estabilished a so clear lead that he decided to do his 270° and absolve from
the penalty.
At the end of the first upwind leg Saragoni was leading by 5 boat lenghts.
The game was over. Saragoni and Di Battista got the Final and the right to
compete for the second time for the ICCT. In 2003 they were defeted 4-3 by
Lovell and Ogletree

Click here for 2nd Qualifier Day Report
Click here for 1st Qualifier Day Report

Here are pix of the event:
All Photos by Photo: Massimo Martino
[img] [image]http://www.catsailor.com/images/icct6935sm.jpg[/img]

The last two are of USA's John Lovell and Charlie Ogletree