Thirteen hours of transfer to get to the berthing, after 12 days of navigation. The “decompression” after crossing the finish line of the Transat CIC is in actual fact the real prize. A perfect dawn welcomed to New York the Class40 IBSA and Alberto Bona who, on May 11 at 4:00 am in the morning (10:00 am Italian time), made his official entry into the Upper Bay passing under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, where the shore team and the IBSA team were waiting for him.
A magical two-hour journey led Alberto to the mooring, after the iconic passage in front of the Statue of Liberty, crossing – as in a dream – one of the world’s most beautiful waterfront, a scenography made up of New York skyscrapers.
Bona is tired and smiling at the same time, with a long list of tasks to carry out – including checking the hull for a potential delimitation at the bow, due to a structural failure during the second disturbance or, perhaps, a collision with an unidentified object.
“I took the Class40 IBSA to the other side of the world, to America!”, stated Alberto.“I hadn’t the fifth place in mind when I set sail from France, but sailing solo means taking up both the adventure and the experience. And this has been a hard but beautiful trial. I’m happy to have experienced it navigating the thin line between pushing yourself to the speed limit and the less performing sailing points. I learned a lot. The second depression, for us who were sailing a little further back, was very tough, there was a real strong swell: a beautiful sight”.
Despite the failures, “everything is fine on board IBSA” has become the motto of Bona’s live broadcasts from the ocean. “Compared to other teams who suffered significant damage, we fared well. I had a problem with a headsail on the first day, which perhaps took away some of my concentration, then I broke a rudder pull down, which forced me to jibe where I hadn’t planned to do so while approaching the low; and then the delamination, which made me more cautious when I was on port tack”.
Now for Alberto a few hours of rest before being celebrated by the collaborators of IBSA USA and before the awards ceremony, scheduled in New York at 6:00 pm on Sunday, May 12.
