Sailing: After five races, and a cancelled final day due to no wind, Eamon Conneely's Patches ended her first competitive outing with a sixth place in the Breitling MedCup series that started in Alicante five days ago.
Having led the event after the opening two days, a broken main halyard lock cost valuable places in Friday's first offshore, though Conneely admitted last night that that problem alone would not have been enough to cost them the regatta.
With the second coastal course subsequently becoming the final race of the regatta, a second place for the Spanish entry Bribon, skippered by Bouwe Bekking, was enough to deliver the event to the Dane on behalf of their patron, King Juan Carlos.
Despite yesterday's cancellation Conneely was not disheartened. Quite the opposite, in fact, as he reflected on his new TP52-footer's performance under skipper Ian Walker since it was launched last Saturday week.
"I'm very happy with the build and performance of the boat and also how the crew have settled in. Our new boat captain James Carroll has done a fantastic job getting Patches ready. But I'm pretty disappointed with the gear failure as we knew it might cause problems and had new locks ordered," he said.
Patches' start in that race was mid-fleet and in the light conditions for the first half of the course, it would have been difficult to make significant gains even after the mainsail problem. In the end, they recovered 10 places from last to 12th.
The following day, a second coastal course was sailed where the fleet split in two - half inshore to the right while the other went left and offshore for the opening upwind leg. In the end, it was the left side that paid with the favourable breeze and Patches lost out along with key rival Artemis, skippered by triple America's Cup winner Russell Coutts.
Although the lead swapped a few times, it was Coutts who got an edge on Walker's team and edged ahead. But in the fresher conditions shortly before the wind shutdown at the finish, Patches showed her windy downwind performance edge and beat Coutts to the line by 45 seconds.
