Paolo Penco victorious in the Giorgio Zuccoli Trophy

Paolo Penco wins the 10th Giorgio Zuccoli Trophy organized by the Associazione Nautica Sebina.   Pier Faccin reports.

The tenth Giorgio Zuccoli Trophy finished last weekend. This regatta, exclusively for ‘A’ Class catamarans, was organized by Associazione Nautica Sebina to celebrate the memory of Giorgio Zuccoli, a great sailing champion, who, a long time ago, began his fantastic career, starting at the ANS. 

The local ‘A’ Class veteran Paolo Penco, very consistent with his scores, won the Trophy with only a two point margin from his sailing club mate, the current Italian A Class Champion Giovanni Calabria. In third place was the season's newcomer Lorenzo Bianchini from Circolo Vela Arco. In fourth was Giuseppe Colombo, followed the German Norbert Baurer, winner of the third race. Then Andrea Ferrari, the Swiss Sergio Vela, followed by Willy Pozder, Luca Micolitti and Bruno Zorzan in the top ten positions. The full final rank, as well as some photos and videos of the regatta, have been uploaded on the Facebook page of ANS. 

Only four of the six races scheduled by the program were completed. On the first day, three races took place with a southern wind around 10 knots, but not perfectly distributed on the regatta area. Then, the wind dropped during the third race, forcing the Race Committee to opt for a course reduction at mark 1 after the second lap. On the second day, only the one race was run, taking advantage of a southern wind that appeared in the morning after the night storms due to the heavy bad weather that hit northern Italy during the weekend. 

The fourth race was crucial. Paolo Penco, who was second in the overall ranking with just one point from Giovanni Calabria before this race, won this last race, while Giovanni could not get higher than a fifth place. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any possibility to run any further races: the wind allowed only the return of the crews to the nautical base just before a storm with strong gusts from the north and hail, already with all the crews and related equipment ashore and safe. 

The next 'A' Cat Italia National Regatta, which will be the latest before the Italian Championship, will be held in Bracciano Lake at the end of July, is the prestigious "The Foiling Week" organized by Fraglia Vela Malcesine. 'A' Class catamarans will be hosted at the nautical base of Polisportiva Fior d'Olivo Acquafresca from 8 to 9 July.

The Notice of Race can be found here: http://www.foilingweek.com/pages/season-2017/garda/fw-a-class-regatta/.