Soldini Crushes Class 40s in Transat

Italian Giovanni Soldini sealed his win in the Class 40 division in The Artemis Transat when he crossed the finish line off Marblehead just after 7 a.m. For the 42-year-old Italian, it was nearly a wire-to-wire win for his year-old Guillaume Verdier design that also won last year’s doublehanded Transat Jacques Vabre. Tactically, Soldini sailed a strong race, staying close to the rhumbline and consolidating at every opportunity. Although we don’t have access to the exact distance, a look at the race’s two-dimensional tracker shows that Soldini sailed what’s probably the shortest total distance of any Class 40 sailor. He continually boxed the rhumbline and minimized his north/south deviations. Meanwhile, some of his competitors were getting as far as 150 miles perpendicular to the rhumbline’s south. "I think I was good in the race," he said. "It was a good choice to stay in the north in the beginning and through the first high pressure."