Paprec's French crew have taken the lead at the Rolex TP52 World Championship in Porto Cervo, with Jean-Luc Petithuguenin's team winning one race and finishing third in the other to head the 15-boat fleet by two points after four races.
Only the Hong Kong entry Alpha Plus, sailed by Shawn and Tina Kang, bettered Paprec on the day. Alpha Plus put together a first and a second in the light sea breeze to post the best daily aggregate, lifting them to fifth overall.
Alpha Plus carry serious firepower. Ado Stead and Ian Moore, both past TP52 world champions, are joined by double America's Cup winner Craig Monk, with 28-year-old Nick Egnot-Johnson on the helm and Luke Van Der Kamp as project manager. Their previous best was a third at Puerto Portals last year. The team started cleanly and were quick to the favoured right side of the course.
Van Der Kamp was upbeat after the racing. "Hopefully this is going to be a special week for this team," he said. "We came in to the season with a little bit less time on the water than other teams this year so it has taken a little bit of time to get caught up. But today we feel like we have caught up and are more dialled in. The team talk today was to go out and be solid and unspectacular. Our plan was to keep our heads down and not take the same risks that we did yesterday. We trust our boat it has really good speed."
Paprec won the opening race of the day, getting the better of Alpha Plus at the first top mark before the tables turned in the next heat. The French campaign, led on the water by ocean racing legend Loïck Peyron, is drawing echoes of last year's Worlds in Cascais, where Paprec finished second and ceded the title to American Magic Quantum Racing on the final day.
"We had a good first race after a good start," Peyron said. "The second one was not so good at the beginning but we are sailing well I think, we are doing good manoeuvres and I felt I was very aware today, in tune with what was going on. And we are leading the regatta which is not bad for a crew of little frogs! I think we some good luck but we try to have clear wind, that is the thing. Everyone is trying to have the same thing. When you are leading that is not a big problem but when you are no you have to go not necessarily where you would like to go but where there is clear wind. But there is such a big fight and I love it, I still love this!"
Paprec sit on 21 points, two ahead of Pieter Heerema's No Way Back on 23. That Dutch entry is led by Terry Hutchinson and includes nine members of last year's championship-winning American Magic Quantum Racing crew. Sled, the day one leader, slipped to third on 24 after a 12-point race. Alpha Plus are sixth on 27.
Consistency is proving elusive across the fleet. The settled breeze on a relatively one-sided track has left little room to recover from mistakes or poor starts, though No Way Back did manage a notable comeback in the second race, dropping as low as 15th before clawing back to eighth.
