Smeralda 888 – Coupe de l’Hippocampe – Saint-Tropez – 4-8 May 2022

It was a pretty full house for the second stage of the 2022 Smeralda 888 championship, the Coupe de l’Hippocampe (Seahorse Cup), with nine teams competing in five races at this event which was celebrating its 15th anniversary.

 

 

There was no let-up at the top of the leaderboard, an always fierce contest between Timofey Sukhotin (Beda) and Francesco Vauban (Botta Dritta) from YCM, with no guarantees as to who will emerge the victor at the end of the season.  The Gulf of Saint-Tropez enjoyed a light 3-10 knot breeze, setting the scene for some top-flight encounters between the two teams which finished neck and neck. Class president Charles de Bourbon des Deux Siciles (Vamos mi Amor) came 3rd to complete the podium. Unable to turn the tables on the juggernaut at the front, the fleet could not play a leading role in this faultless contest by the men in the lead.

The Smeralda 888 fleet will meet again in a couple of weeks for the Corsica Cup in Calvi organised as part of the Monaco-Calvi (2-5 June) meeting for motoryachts and YCM’s flagship Tuiga.