Co-skippers Nannini and Peggs on SunGard Front Arena take second overall in first leg of RBI

Marco Nannini and co-skipper Paul Peggs, sailing on Class 40 SunGard Front Arena, have arrived in Kinsale taking second place overall just moments after the leading boat, Phesheya Racing.

The first leg of this race started with a beat to the Bishop lighthouse on the south of the Isles of Scilly followed by a spinnaker run to kinsale with some very exciting sailing as the wind filled from the south-south-east, reaching peaks of 30kts pushing the boats at great speeds.

Class40s have proven to be the most powerful and exciting boats in the race, filling the top spots ahead even of the multi-hulls which are now left doing the chasing from the next leg.

“Awesome” is the first word that springs to mind when we asked co-skipper Paul Peggs what he thought of this first leg of the race “A bit bumby at times but really excellent sailing. The boat performed exceptionally well, no real drama, Class 40s are excellent boats to sail”.

Marco Nannini was also very pleased with the performance during this first leg – “A part from the qualifier this was the first time we sailed any real distance on the boat and we got wind, plenty of it, with a fantastic spinnaker run from Bishop to Kinsale in up to 30 knots, boat surfing and grin on our face; it was great to finish top, just 8 minutes behind Phesheya Racing, that I consider one of the race favourites”.

The only real disappointment comes with the race website, it didnt work, it crashed, the most recent piece of news is dated april, the results and finish times are incomplete after 18 hours of the boats arriving and in many instances are wrong – absolutely unacceptable. With all the hard work that it takes entrants to make it to the start line you would expect race organisers to make an equal effort to deliver the race to the public. You can now bypass the official website and at least view the race tracker at live.adventuretracking.com/rbandi2010 whilst waiting and hoping things will be fixed and the newsflow started.

Marco and Paul will restart for the second leg tomorrow today (9 June) at 18:41, exactly 48 hours from their finish time yesterday.

See Elaine Bunting’s comment in her blog