The week in racing - 8 June

Plenty to get stuck into this week: the Sardinia Cup back from a 14-year exile, a three-time Solitaire winner crowned in Le Havre, a back-to-back match racing win in Annapolis, and the Vendée Arctique under way on its dash to the Circle and back.

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The Range Rover Sardinia Cup returned to Porto Cervo last week after a 14-year gap, and the regatta first run by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda in 1978 picked up much where it left off.

The centrepiece came early and, as it turned out, settled most of the argument: a roughly 130-mile offshore race worth double points and carrying no discard. A strong Mistral pushed the start back to dusk, the fleet reaching away off the Li Nibani islands as the light faded on a course new to most of them, before the breeze eased into the high teens overnight. Ino Veritas, James Neville’s boat with Dean Barker on tactics, won it in SC1, while in SC2 Per Roman’s Swedish GP42 Garm got the better of Ran on the first downwind and held on, the first Swedish boat to win the Sardinia Cup offshore. Two wins in the leg that mattered most, both for the Royal Ocean Racing Club, put the club in firm control of the team standings. Damage forced Jolt 3 and Red Bandit out of that race, the latter then withdrawing from the event altogether.

The windward-leeward racing that followed brought the Mistral in full, gusting into the low 20s. Jolt 3 recovered to win both SC1 races on the penultimate day, and Ran was a cut above the rest in SC2 for the RORC Gold team, at one stage discarding a race win as its worst result. But with the offshore points banked and non-discardable, RORC’s lead held.

A gentle 8-10 knot coastal race on the final day, 7 June, was enough to close it out. RORC took the Cup ahead of hosts YCCS and RORC Gold, with Ino Veritas claiming the SC1 class title and Ran the SC2 class. A proper revival, and plenty for the clubs to chew on before they meet again at the Admiral's Cup next year. Full results here.

The fleet agreed this was one of the most punishing editions of La Solitaire du Figaro Paprec in years, and it crowned a deserving champion in Nicolas Lunven (PRB), back on the circuit nine years after his last appearance and now only the seventh sailor ever to win the race three times. The veteran sat patiently in the wake of the leaders before pouncing on a final leg that tore through the fleet, with eight retirements and a heavy following sea in the English Channel.

The moment no one will forget, though, belongs to Tom Dolan (Kingspan). The Irishman led overall leaving Pornichet, then ran aground on the Chaussée de Sein after dozing off while lying second – a gut-punch end to a near-flawless campaign. Behind Lunven, Alexis Thomas (Wings of the Ocean) took a maiden podium in second, while Paul Morvan grabbed his first-ever stage win in Le Havre to finish third, a decade after his father Gildas’s last Figaro victory. Paul Loiseau, just 20, was top rookie in fourth. Full results here.

Dutch Water Week wrapped up on Sunday off Almere, the IJmeer serving up 20-25 knots in the shadow of fort island Pampus on the windier days, then a flatter, trickier offshore breeze for the finale. Three Olympic classes were in action, and the home sailors had plenty to cheer.

The 49er went to the Austrian pair Keanu Prettner and Jakob Flachberger, a week of steady sailing holding off a late surge from the American crew of Andrew Mollerus and Trevor Bornarth in the medal series. The Dutch duo Robbert Huisman and Jorn Swart took third after a jury-imposed penalty turn scuppered their second medal race.

In the ILCA 7, Willem Wiersema of the Netherlands nursed a slender lead over Switzerland’s Gauthier Verhulst through to the medal races and closed it out, with Lars Jansen making it two Dutchmen in the top three in third.

The most one-sided result of the lot came in the ILCA 6, where Maxime Jonker was a class apart – a run of race wins building a lead so commanding she had no need of a medal series to confirm it, heading an all-Dutch podium from Hieke Schraffordt and Féline van Ede. Worth noting the fleet was thin this year, a clogged May calendar of Worlds and Europeans leaving this Sailing Grand Slam stop lighter than it’d have liked. Full results here.

Across the Atlantic in Annapolis, USA's Team BAAM took back-to-back victory at the Santa Maria Cup, Allie Blecher and her crew of Beka Schiff, Katja Sertl and Ali Blumenthal Stokes beating Sweden's Anna Östling 3-1 in a final that went right to the wire.

Östling levelled at 1-1 and led the pivotal third race, only for a forced extra tack on the final beat to hand Blecher the inside lane at the top mark. The clincher carried its own twist – aggressive pre-start work from BAAM pinned a penalty on Östling, who led anyway, got her penalty turn done before the line, then threw everything at a last-ditch attack at the finish in search of an error. Blecher refused to take the bait, crossing ahead to seal the race, the match and the second stage of the Women's World Match Racing Tour. The Netherlands' Julia Aartsen took third on her event debut.

Next stop on the Women's WMRT: Marstrand at the end of the month. Full results here.

Lake Balaton served up the full menu for the Star Eastern Hemisphere Championship, from storm-force northwesterlies and abandoned racing to a picture-perfect southwesterly finale, and through it all Hans Spitzauer and Christian Nehammer of Austria were untouchable. They had the title sewn up after winning race five – so comfortably they could skip the last race entirely – having already pocketed the District 17 Championship earlier in the week. Germany’s Daniel Fritz and Jan Eli Gravad took silver and the best-U30 honours, with fellow Germans Hubert Merkelbach and Markus Koy third. Full results here.

On Saturday the biggest catamaran race on the planet ran its annual lap of the Dutch island of Texel – a 100km blast from Paal 17 and back, with the beach at the heart of a three-day festival of multihulls, windsurfers and wingfoilers. Have a look:

Check the tracker replay here.

There's nothing gentle about the Vendée Arctique, yet you'd not have known it from the off. The nine-boat IMOCA fleet drifted out of Les Sables d'Olonne on Sunday in a sun-soaked 5-8 knots for the third running of this dash to the Arctic Circle and back, the only early intrigue a tactical split as Manu Cousin and Arnaud Boissières peeled off west while the rest hugged the coast past the Île d'Yeu.

The calm didn't last. A front swept through on Monday and the race bared its teeth, the fleet beating into 15-18 knots and a building sea. Sam Goodchild (MACIF Santé Prévoyance) has edged a narrow lead and is working to shake off Corentin Horeau (MACSF), who touched 27 knots overnight, though both know the worst is still ahead: 3-3.5m swells and 25-30 knots are forecast for the second night, with a hard crossing to Ireland beyond.

It's already taking a toll, Cousin losing two or three hours to a misbehaving mainsail hook and a seasick Nico d'Estais admitting the fun had drained away well short of Ireland. An interesting extra dimension to the race: three skippers – Cousin and Boissières among them, with Francesca Clapcich on 11th Hour Racing – are carrying Météo-France climate buoys to drop near the Circle, gathering real-time ocean data from waters almost nothing else crosses. Track the fleet here.

The SSL Gold Cup rolls into its European Qualifiers Round 1 this week on Lake Neuchâtel, running from today until Thursday, and we’re livestreaming it all on The Foil YouTube channel.

Two groups are in play – Austria, Slovenia and Estonia in one, Norway, Belgium, Lithuania and Serbia in the other – with the winner of each group booking a ticket to the SSL Gold Cup Finals in Rio at the end of the year.

It follows last week’s African and Oceanian qualifiers on the same lake, where Tahiti’s Black Pearls sealed top spot with a pair of bullets on the final day and Seychelles’ Vann Swet hung on to the second qualifying spot, leaving Morocco and Mozambique to rue what might have been. Full results and standings here.

Over in the French town of Carnac, the 15th Musto Skiff World Championship is under way at the Yacht Club de Carnac, a decade on from the venue’s last hosting in 2016. A fleet of around 40 has South Africa’s Andy Tarboton back to defend his 2025 crown, with Eddie Bridle, Alex Greil and Jamie Hilton filling the pre-Worlds podium.

And for once The Foil’s own Andy Rice isn’t watching from the dock – he’s racing, having taken seventh in the pre-Worlds and, more importantly, the coveted crown of Top Old Git. Racing proper kicked off today, and you can track the races here.

In L'Escala, on Spain's Costa Brava, Club Nàutic l’Escala hosts the Moth Class European Championship from 7-13 June, with 75 foilers and sailors from 17 countries coming together on the Sea of Empúries.

The OK Dinghy World Championship opened on Sunday evening at Hellerup, near Copenhagen, hosted jointly by the Royal Danish Yacht Club and Hellerup Sejlklub, running until Friday. More than 200 boats from 14 nations have entered – the second-biggest OK Worlds of all time – in a class marking its 70th anniversary. Designed in Denmark back in 1956 by Knud Olsen, whose reversed initials gave the boat its name, the OK is pulling in a healthy crop of younger sailors this time round, which suggests this classic has plenty of life in it yet.