On the Friday before the start of the Transat Québec Saint-Malo, the teams attend weather briefings and perform their final on-board checks.
Meanwhile, it’s time to find the right set-up again: Alberto Bona has to switch from solo to crew racing mode; Pablo Santurde del Arco has just got off a multihull and is happy to be back on board the Class40 IBSA again; and then there is Luca Rosetti, the new entry in the team.
“We go back to a crewed regatta after the solo Transat CIC”, commented Alberto,“and I’m really happy. We chose to have three of us on board, according to a layout that we had already tried last year with Pablo and which had worked well. Some crews went for the four-man solution instead, but it’s an option that I did not want to take into consideration because, in a transoceanic, it seems really complex in terms of weights and divisions of space. The planning of the shifts for each of the three crew members – with two hours of operativeness, two hours in a stand by condition, ready to manoeuver, and two hours completely dedicated to rest – has already been proved to be a winner for us.
So – for the sixth regatta (and the third across the Atlantic) – Spaniard Pablo Santurde del Arco is back on board with Bona and the new entry Luca Rosetti, winner of Minitransat 2023,who hadalready selected several months ago to carry out the transfer of the Class40 IBSA from Martinique to France, after the Transat Jacques Vabre.
“There is now a symbiosis with Pablo”, specifies Alberto. “We don’t even need to talk anymore; we know each other perfectly and racing together is now natural”.
Pablo, in turn, is ready to return aboard the Class40 IBSA after getting off – less than ten days ago – an Ocean Fifty, a 50’ catamaran which – in Pablo own words:“is outside of my comfort zone. I’m happy to be back on the Class40 IBSA for this regatta, which will be both difficult and fun”.
This is Pablo’s second run in the Transat Québec Saint-Malo, while Luca Rosetti is at his first, as a freshman in Class40: “Being here is very nice”, commented Luca,“especially with this crew. I have been following Alberto since he raced in the Mini class; sailing with him is a real honour. I’m sure that I will learn a lot from these two crewmates, and I’m equally sure that they will squeeze me like a lemon!”.
Alberto smiles at the image evoked by Luca. In the last few days, the team sailed along the St. Lawrence River to learn about the area and the navigation dynamics, as well as to test the equipment: “We did a very useful first run-in, in order to be in perfect harmony during the regatta”,commented the skipper.
