ENDURING APPEAL

THIS YEAR'S SUPERYACHT CUP PALMA MAY HAVE BEEN A TRICKY TEST ON THE BAY, BUT THE J CLASS HELPED ADD GLAMOUR TO THE SPECTACLE, AS ANDI ROBERTSON REPORTS

- ANDI ROBERTSON

This year’s Superyacht Cup Palma, held from 29 June to 2 July, proved why Europe’s longest-running superyacht regatta ticks so many boxes. At its heart the Superyacht Cup is run by sailors for owners and their crew, offering ‘bite-sized’ coastal races on the legendary Bay of Palma before a chance to reconvene in the bars of the beautiful Real Club Nàutico de Palma to mull over the day’s competition. It’s an enduring appeal which has seen some teams come back year after year, but this year also welcomed yachts under new ownership for a first, memorable, taste of superyacht racing.

The 2022 edition may not have been the biggest but it was a pleasingly diverse fleet, from Wallys to modern classics, to the big, beautiful – but occasionally unwieldy – superyachts. Core attendees include a local congregation of large, competitive yachts, although this summer’s 11 entries represented a drop on recent years. However, most encouraging of all was the upsurge in J Class participation. It is eight years since there was a fleet of five J Class yachts racing and so having four racing hard and evenly against each other was a spectacle in itself, while the class has been substantially reinvigorated with Ranger and Svea under new ownership.

It was also an atypical event in that the Bay of Palma didn’t really uphold its reputation for the thermally generated sea breezes you can set your watch by. Instead there was a real variety of light to moderate southwesterly sea breezes, giving way to a tricky, shifty northeasterly gradient blowing off the land which peaked at 12-13 knots at times.