Bigamist back in the game at breezy Carthagena

Three windward-leeward races are scheduled for today, with testing conditions anticipated — a solid 15-knot north-easterly breeze is currently blowing, expected to build to around 18 knots from between 20-40 degrees. For this afternoon’s races sea state will also be a factor on the deep-water course area which has a large rolling swell.

One crew who will be racing for the first time this season is the Portuguese Bigamist 6 team, who rejoin the circuit for the first time this year in owner Pedro Mendoça's Reichel / Pugh design (formerly Lexus Quantum), which finished second overall in 2005, building up to their home regatta, the 2008 Audi MedCup finale at Portimao, Portugal.

Skipper and helmsman Afonso Domingos arrived in Carthagena fresh from representing Portugal at the Beijing Olympic Games in the Star class, where he and Bernardo Santos finished eighth overall. “Because of the Olympic Games, we didn’t get so much time to dedicate to the boat. So I spoke with Pedro Mendoça, the owner, and he said, okay, we do Carthagena and Portimao — we need to do the race in Portimao, because it’s a race in our country, we need to go there! Our goal is not to win the race, it’s to represent Portugal.”

The team have been training hard in Cascais, although in yesterday’s practice race Domingos was impressed by the standard of boat handling in the fleet. “The performance of the other teams is really good, their manoeuvres are much better than us.

“We are a little bit slower than the new boats, but we can improve a little bit. I think we need to improve with more speed than we have now, but our top speed cannot be compared to the top speed of the new boats. But more important than the question of the boats is the team. I can see some teams who have new boats who are sailing almost at the same speed as ours, so I think the team is more important than whether it’s a new one or an old one.

“I prefer light winds because when the wind is blowing the new boats have more advantage, also the performance of the crew is not so important. Between now and Portimao we will be training, trying to 100 per cent explore our boat and our equipment. If we can do that, then we should finish in a nice place!”

Unlike many teams on the Audi MedCup circuit, which have an amateur or owner-driver surrounding by top pro crew, Bigamist is a largely amateur boat. “What happens on our boat is that I am a professional, and almost all the team is amateur. We have one professional grinder, one professional tactician, and one professional jib trimmer and this year one professional mainsail trimmer, and one steering guy – that’s me! So we have five professionals, and the rest of the guys have sailed together since a long time ago. I’ve been sailing with the boat captain for 10 years. We only changed some elements of the team just to have more fun.”

“It’s my first race with Hugo Rocha (Bigamist tactican), it’s good because usually I race against him in match racing. And it was really nice to speak Portuguese during the racing.”

Having sailed on the TP52 circuit for three years, Afonso Domingos was struck by the standard of this year's Audi MedCup racing during yesterday's practice race — won by another Olympian sailor, Jochen Schümann (GER) on Platoon. “The fleet has improved a lot. It seems to be a question of the start, and going to the right side, not of manoeuvres. Before they counted for a lot. I was surprised by the gybes of some of the boats, they were sailing really really well. We saw a different way of sailing downwind, they were sailing much lower but with the same boatspeed effect, so they are changing the way they sail and that’s good because it’s exploring the potential of the boats.”