The first day began with 15 knots of southwest breezes on a rainy, drizzly cloudy day, but the sun and the wind soon arrived in Quiberon Bay. The weather could not have turned out better for the 37th SPI Ouest France Intermarche Regatta over the Easter holiday weekend. Many of the large one-design classes, including the J/70s, managed to get in eleven races. Sailing from April 2-5, the races on Quiberon Bay went off like clockwork. This year’s J/70 fleet had a strong international. As anticipated, there were certainly going to be some tough match-ups during the regatta; perhaps the most interesting duel was between the United Kingdom’s Ian Atkins driving BOATS.COM (UK National Champion) and multiple World Champion Hugo Rocha from Spain sailing NEW TERRITORIES. Atkins opened the series with an impressive five firsts in the first seven races. However, Rocha’s team started to figure out the boat and the course and they, in turn, closed with four bullets in the last four races. In the end, BOATS.COM was declared champion by a mere 3 points, with 21 points to Rocha’s 23 points. The battle for the top five, or even the top ten, was remarkably close after sailing 11 races and counting 10. The top French team was Le Havre’s Ludovic Senechal sailing LULU NANTAISE, sailing a very steady series of races to only toss a sixth in his first race to take the bronze. The balance of the top five were Laureano’s PETIT PALACE HOTELS from Spain in fourth and Oliver Lundqvists’s Swedish team on THE PURE CIRCLE taking fifth. For more SPI OUEST France Intermarche sailing information, visit http://www.ouest-france.fr/spi.