22nd Sandberg PalmaVela Day 1
by Sandberg PalmaVela 2026 30 Apr 11:23 PDT
23-27 April & 29 April - 3 May 2026
Two short and relatively sharp races in light breezes opened the 22nd edition of Sandberg PalmaVela, the annual showcase regatta on the Bay of Palma which really signals the start of the Mediterranean racing season.
While the titles in each class are fought for hard and carry their own measure of prestige the event is widely used as a great warm up for upcoming pinnacle events, an acid test of boats and teams in full racing conditions.
Honours were shared today in the IMA/IRC Maxi class where it is Sven Wackerhagen's smaller, nimbler German-flagged Wally 80 Rose which only holds the nominal lead by virtue of tie break. Pascale Decaux and her crew on the Wally 100 footer Tilakkhana II won the first windward-leeward by just 13 seconds on corrected time but Rose took the win in the second race by over one minute from Tilakkhanna II.
Record breaking Dee Caffari reported from Tilakkhana II, "We had an interesting, very short start line. And there was not a lot of runway it got quite shallow so we had a bit on. We have to beat Rose by a lot on the water so we are really sailing on our own a lot of the time which is a bit weird. We sailed clean and it is a nice way to start the regatta. The courses were short and the wind a little bit shifty and so it was almost lays from the mark and so there was not a lot of strategy and tactics. It was set the kite, gybe and we were at the mark! It was a busy day, less manoeuvres which makes it easy to sail clean and so it is nice therefore to come ashore with a job list which is very short."
"For us this is very much start of the season training, we have eight new crew on the team. And we are sailing this year with 22 and not the 26 we had last year. It is really nice training with not too many boats around so we come to Sorrento we are ready to race."
While Caffari, owner-helm Decaux and crew are working up to the IMA Maxi Europeans later this month in Sorrento, Italy there is a red hot TP52 fleet using Sandberg PalmaVela as final training and tuning ahead of next week's 52 SUPER SERIES opening event on these same waters.
Nine of the 13 TP52s entered for Sandberg PalmaVela took part in the official training today on the same course area as the IMA Maxis. Andrea Lacorte's Italian flagged Alkedo with Cameron Appleton calling tactics was first to finish the practice race ahead of the French crew of Jean-Luc Petithuguenin's Paprec with Pieter Heerema's No Way Back third. The Dutchman has purchased the former Quantum Racing including keeping on most of the 2025 title winning crew.
"PalmaVela is great as a warm up before next week. We still have some things to check off with a few new crew but equally we have to make sure we don't tire ourselves out ahead of the Super Series. We trained a month ago here but did not really get much of a chance to speed test then." Jordi Calafat, the Palma based Olympic medal winning strategist from Platoon Aviation said. Platoon will start racing with the TP52 fleet tomorrow Friday.
"We are happy with the boat, we had two good practise starts we had good speed and it was good practise today. We are looking forwards to the fight tomorrow. We had 12-13 knots to start with today but it dropped to eight or nine knots it was very tricky." Paprec's Stéphane Néve recalled.
In Class 0 which features three TP52's which are not in class trim it is James Neville's British boat Ino Veritas which opened best with two first places ahead of Barcelona's Toni Guiu on Aproperties-Blue Carbon.
ORC Class 1 sees the RCNP's Christian Plump leading with his crew on Elena Nova counting two first places also in the 10 boat division whilst ORC 2 finds Marco Corno's Magica an X41 from the CN Masnou near Barcelona leading on tie break.
The regatta grows closer to its full magnitude Friday when rest of the fleet will join in, competition getting under way for the TP52, ORC 3, ORC 4-5, ORC A2, ORC Sportboats, Espíritu de Tradición, Dragon and Flying Fifteen classes, seeing a fleet of 100 boats making this one of the biggest editions for many years.
Find out more at www.palmavela.com