Helly Hansen

Andrea Caracci goes back to the Ocean trought its main entrance: the Strait of Gibraltar. During this week the Helly Hansen team's athlete will take part to the Festival Dos Oceanos, a regatta to be run in double-handed reserved to the Mini 650 class. The route is made up of 4 steps, and will take Andrea and the Spanish Juan Carlos Oliva from Marsille to Lisboa, passing by Algesiras and Rabat. Juan Carlos bought the boat which won the last Transat with Yves De Blevec and needed a well prepared and competitive co-skipper like Andrea! Juan Carlos Oliva said: -I'm very happy to make this regatta with Andrea. For me it's a great opportunity to practise a type of boat which is new for me, with an exceptional teacher like him, with 4 years of experience and victories in his class.- The HH Team's athlete is going on with his project of his new boat designed by Sam Manuard for the next Transat and in the meantime has won with his old boat the Mini Solo Regatta in Sanremo. The Festival Dos Oceanos is a nice regatta, very interesting from a weather point of view. We will find changeable and demanding conditions!- says Andrea. -I go back to the Ocean but I'm not particularly worried, since it's not the Ocean that made me make a mistake, but just my shallownness in not considering the charges that had to support the backstay junction. (see two video made onboard during the Transat 650 in the second and fourth racing day: http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=NO-MlPaLHGQ and http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=UAg1zo_tpO4 ) This regatta with Juan Carlos Oliva is stimulating since his Mini is one of the fastest prototypes and will give me the chance to test some new ideas for the new boat that I'm building. Moreover he needed my help to take place to this race. He is a beginner and according to the rules of the Mini he couldn't have raced in the long race of 700 miles without a co-skipper, who had already run the miles required for the qualification.-