NEWS ARCHIVE 2006/11
Benetti sets up a Service Department
14.11.2006
Benetti announces the set up of a new department in charge of specifically dealing with service and warranties issues for the Benetti fleet worldwide.
This new department will be headed by Ing. Francesco Pisciotta in Viareggio who has been joined by Captain Bill Leonard in Fort Lauderdale. This department is dedicated to providing service and support to all Benetti vessels in Europe and in the US, Carribean and Mexico. In addition to supervising work on the Benetti fleet located in the above mentioned territories, they will the warranty representative and contact for owners, captains and crew, liaising with the shipyard’s Project Management Department in Viareggio. Based in Florida, Bill will commute between Fort Lauderdale and Viareggio.
Bill Leonard’s previous marine history includes positions on board various yachts from Broward, Christensen and Amels, as well as build engineer on one of the most recent Benetti Classics, SIETE (#14).
Source : Benetti
Close to 70 entries for Sydney-Hobart race
09.11.2006
Close to 70 yachts representing Britain, New Zealand, Italy, Canada, NSW, Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania, Queensland and the ACT have entered this year's Sydney-Hobart race, with just two days to go before entries close.
Among the favourites for next month's race are the three 30-metre maxis, Charles St Clair Brown and Bill Buckley's New Zealand maxi, Maximus, Grant Wharington's 2003 line honours winner, Skandia, and the defending handicap and line honours winner and race record holder, Wild Oats XI (Bob Oatley).
Mike Sanderson's Volvo 70 ABN Amro One has been nominated as have three of the classics - Mike Freebairn's 1968 overall winner of the race Koomooloo; 84-year-old John Walker and his IOR three quarter tonner Impeccable and Maurie Cameron's Phillips Foote Witchdoctor, which this year will pass Mark Twain's previous record for the most Sydney-Hobarts undertaken by a boat, 25.
Team NZ helmsman wins match-racing cup
02.11.2006
Team New Zealand helmsman Ben Ainslie won his first event on the world match-racing tour, beating Alinghi's Ed Baird in the final of the Allianz Cup in San Francisco. Ainslie and his Emirates Team New Zealand crew of Terry Hutchinson, Tony Rae, James Dagg and Jeremy Lomas sailed 19 races in the regatta and lost just five, which won them US$25,000 ($37,830) of the US$100,000 ($151,330) prize purse.
Competing in Group A, they finished with a 5-2 record before going on to beat Italian Paolo Cian in the quarter-finals 3-1 and Englishman Ian Williams in the semifinals 3-1.
In the final against Baird, Ainslie, a triple Olympic medallist and four-time Finn Gold Cup champion, won the five-race series 3-1, winning three races straight after dropping the first.
"The first start we didn't have a great one to be honest, the next three we nailed them. Terry [Hutchinson] did a great job nailing the shifts," Ainslie said.
