Scorpione dei Mari - Overall Winner. SYC - Image by Claire Matches: www.clairematches.com

For more exclusive images of Palma SYC 2010 - Go to "Read More" below and click down to pages 3,4 & 5

Superyacht week in June - hundreds of international visitors bring very welcome income to Palma!

This year again the Palma Superyacht Cup following on from the Future of Superyachts Conference during the same week in June proved to be a splendid combination of events.

Many of the 100 or so delegates at the conference stayed in town for the Superyacht Cup which this year had 22 confirmed entries. This was the most since 2007 when the event was timed to coincide with the America’s Cup in Valencia and attracted over 50 of the world’s most spectacular luxury sailing yachts.

After 12 entries in 2008, and 17 in 2009, this level of participation served to prove that maybe financial expectations are improving in the global superyacht market, and that the Palma SYC can still attract an impressive line up of beautiful large sailing yachts, in both cruising and high performance categories.

This year the pursuit style handicapping system was managed by Jim Teeters from the USA, who is renowned for his unique yacht regatta rating system. With a range of varying style yachts, tonnages, sail plans and water line lengths from 24 metres up to 88 metres (Maltese Falcon) this must be the ultimate challenge for any sailing race handicapper.

In simple terms each boat is rated for its sailing characteristics and given an estimated range of speeds that it may achieve upwind and downwind. This performance matrix or velocity table is then adjusted to take account of wind conditions on the day, with the yacht that is rated slowest starting first, and the fastest starts last. The concept is called pursuit racing, and with adjustments based on actual performance and the finishing position of each yacht on the first two race days, the third day should in theory produce a race where all the competitors cross the finishing line at the same time.

Jim’s system stood up to the test despite some very variable wind conditions, seeing some close finishes and exciting duals across the fleet, especially on race day 3 (the last day - Sat 26th June,) which took a 24.5 nm course almost following the whole perimeter of the bay.