The Real Club Náutico de Palma presents new features on the dates and format of the Copa del Rey Mapfre 2024, as well as on the scoring system in the Final Series. This was announced in a press release, where he recalled that, regarding classes, there will continue to be those that sail in one-design ClubSwan 50, ClubSwan 42, J70 and Women’s Cup- and in handicap -with four ORC classes-.
The regatta is organized by the Real Club Náutico de Palma (RCNP) on behalf of the Real Federación Española de Vela (RFEV), with the sponsorship of Mapfre and the institutional sponsorship of the Balearic Government, the City Council of Palma and the collaboration of the Authority Port of the Balearic Islands and the Balearic Sailing Federation.
The Copa del Rey Mapfre will have an official training day on Monday, July 29 and the following five days will be competition days. The regatta, which originally took place without a training day, will officially begin on Sunday, July 28 with the registration and measurement day and will end on Saturday, August 3, with the tests taking place from Tuesday to Saturday for the ORC and ClubSwan classes while J70 and the all-female Women’s Cup class will sail from Wednesday to Saturday. All of them, like last year, will begin the heats at 12:00 p.m.
As in previous editions, all classes will compete in windward-leeward “poles” format tests. This 2024, the organization also recovers the celebration of a coastal regatta as already happened in the 41st edition of 2023, guiding itself towards the parameters of the 2025 European Championship, where there will be two days of coastal racing and three days of “poles”.
Manuel Fraga, director of the Copa del Rey Mapfre, comments that they are in the midst of evolving the format so that the ORC is the lung of the regatta for 2025 and the coming years.
The Copa del Rey Mapfre will continue to have a Preliminary Series and a Final Series. The Previous Series will be six races that will be sailed on Tuesday the 30th, Wednesday the 31st, and Thursday August 1st (July 31st and August 1st in the case of J70). The Final Series will consist of four races for ORC and the ClubSwan one-designs, and six rounds for the J70. If by the end of Thursday, August 1, a class has not completed a minimum of four tests, the Preliminary Series will be extended until the end of Friday, August 2. And if at the end of August 2, that minimum of tests are still not completed, there will be no Final Series.
The novelty with respect to previous editions is that upon entering the Final Series the score of each boat will not be the position with which it enters said phase (the first classified has one point, the second two points, the third three , etc.) but will be the total calculation of points accumulated in the Previous Series with a discard.
The Copa del Rey Mapfre will also have a great incentive for the most emerging one-design class in the world, the J70, of which a large registration is expected just over a month before the first round of the World Championship also organized by the Real Club Nautical of Palma.