Katusha Alexandra Novoselova wins her first victory on RC44 Championship Tour

Russian team «Katyusha» Alexander Novoselova has won the second round of the RC44 Championship Tour, which ended last week in Porto Cervo, Italy.

This is the first win of «Katusha» in the regatta. The team has raced two full seasons in RC44 class with the same line-up.

It has been a very varied week for the nine crews competing in the RC44 Porto Cervo Cup. The winds were varying from weak to extremely strong for RC44 class boats above 25 knots. Due to the strong Mistral, the organizers even had to cancel the races scheduled for Saturday.

By the final day of the competition «Katyusha» approached with an advantage of two points. In the first two races of the final, the team strengthened their lead, coming in first and second. The gap between «Katusha» and its closest pursuers increased to such an extent that the result of the last race was of no importance for the team, a rather rare situation in the RC44 class, where the competition between the teams is very high.

The last race, «Katyusha» has already secured the victory and was conservative, nevertheless the team was among the leaders at the first mark.

For Charisma Nico Punch the final day of competition in Porto Cervo turned out to be very ambiguous. In the first race, the team broke a portable backstretch and its tactician Morgan Reeser was overboard. The second race Charisma won, taking the lead in the last minute against Katusha.

In the second race Charisma won the main event despite a collision with Peninsula Petroleum that forced Charisma to use onboard pumps and broke the transom.

The culprits of the collision themselves earned themselves a nasty crack in the bow and two penalty points. However, this didn't prevent Peninsula Petroleum from taking third place in Porto Cervo and thus becoming the leader of the first two rounds of the Championship Tour.

The last race of the final day was won by Igor Laha's Team Cereef, thus securing the second place in the final stage table.

Russian «Nika» finished the second stage of RC44 Championship Tour in fifth place.

» Nika's owner Vladimir Prosikhin, «Nika's owner, was not happy with the result, and has expressed his hopes of a better performance from the team at the next round of the regatta in Marstrand, when tactician Terry Hutchinson will return to the crew of «Nika».