The first day’s racing at the Star Bacardi Cup took place on Sunday and sailing veteran Paul Cayard and crew Phil Trinter of America taking the first race victory of the six-race series from Marc Pickel and Ingo Borkowski of Germany.

Racing was delayed three hours as the sailors waited for the light and patchy breeze to develop but eventually the wind filled in and the racing got underway.

With such a large fleet (93 boats) the race committee had trouble getting the race started and were forced to fly a ‘black flag’, which meant that anyone who started prematurely would be penalised. There were 13 casualties and amongst them was Team GBR sailors Iain Percy and Steve Mitchell who were forced to return to shore early. All is not lost as they may be able to discard this result if the fleet manages to sail all of the six scheduled races.

Percy commented: “One more mistake and the event is over for us, so we will just have to try and stay out of trouble.”

Racing continues through until Friday 12 March.

Results (after day 1) 1, Paul Cayard/Phil Trinter, USA (1) 1 pt

2, Marc Pickel/Ingo Borkowski, GER (2) 2 pts

3, Ross Macdonald/Mike Wolfs, CAN (3) 3 pts

4, Fredrik Loof/Anders Ekstrom, SWE (4) 4 pts

5, Rick Merriman/Bill Bennett, USA (5) 5 pts

GBR

77, Iain Percy/Steve Mitchell (BFD) 94 pts