Kings Cup Winner 2024 - Charlie Lavarello

LAVARELLO REGAINS KING’S CUP - Courtesy of Hamish Risso

After a two-year drought, Charlie Lavarello once again wins the King’s Cup in the final race of the season.

Despite his valiant efforts in taking the chase up to the final day, Charlie Stagnetto takes the runners up

Patron 4 – Last Championship Race of the season

The 4th and last race of the Patron Series, was also the final race of the 2024 King’s Cup championship, and there was an air of excitement as Charlie Stagnetto had won the previous race to pull level with Charlie Lavarello at the top of the Championship with only the final race left.

This meant that the final race of the season was a winners take all, and whichever boat finished ahead of the other, would be crowned the 2024 champions – basically the stakes could not be any higher – although Lavarello also had the added pressure that he needed to finish in the top 2 to claim the title.

The conditions also decided to play their part, with a strong Westerly wind and large waves being the order of the day for a course sailed between Western beach and the RAF buoy.

In Lavarello’s boat, Nemesis, there was also a throw back to the old days with Hamish Risso, his old crew from years gone by and now a rival skipper, putting to one side his own ambitions to crew for Lavarello to try and help Lavarello win the title one more time.

As the countdown to the start progressed, the boats jostled for position with Charlie Lavarello appearing to have the better of Charlie Stagnetto with 20 seconds left. However, under pressure from Micko Sheppard-Capurro, Lavarello made a mistake and allowed Stagnetto to get the better start. Advantage Stagnetto.

As the boats sailed the first beat, Stagnetto kept a close eye on Lavarello forcing him towards the unfavourable South for longer than he wanted and at the same time creeping up to windward on Lavarello at every puff from the growing wind. Eventually, Lavarello had to react and he decided to tack back to the North despite knowing that Stagnetto would tack on him and cover him all the way back.

And so, it transpired, with Lavarello tacking first and Stagnetto following suit in an attempt to cover him. However, Stagnetto left the tack slightly too late, and this opened the door for Lavarello who took advantage of his better momentum to not only pass Stagnetto but also creep up on him, forcing Stagnetto to have to tack back again into the unfavourable South. Advantage Lavarello.

With this action, the first mission for Lavarello was complete – he had to beat Stagnetto and it was unlikely that he would come back from that – but the second objective was still very much up in the air as Lavarello also needed a 2nd place to claim the title (a 3rd would still give it to Stagnetto) and whilst they had been sailing in the unfavourable South, Nick Cruz in Eos and David Quach in Niña had sailed North and now had a considerable lead on Lavarello.

Worryingly on the following run, Lavarello made little impact on the nearest boat Niña, but in the following beat his superior crew weight came to the fore and he soon passed Niña and put himself second. If Lavarello thought that that was the end of his problems, he was wrong, as Niña came back strongly in the second half of that beat to sit just behind him on the second and final run.

However, Lavarello managed to keep his cool and stay ahead of Niña thanks mainly to some great spinnaker work by his crew Alex Dobbs but the leader Nemesis also had their own expert on the spinnaker in Joey Imossi and so made no head way on the leading boat’s advantage.

Once again, the beat was a different matter with Lavarello’s crew weight advantage coming to the fore as in the previous round and manging to quickly reduce Nick Cruz’s lead with the finish in sight. In the end Nick Cruz did enough to protect his lead crossing the line just 3 seconds ahead of Lavarello with David Quach a very creditable 3rd and Charlie Stagnetto in a disappointing 4th.

These results meant that Lavarello had once again regained the Kings Cup – something that seemed very unlikely at the start of the season – but as usual he proved that he should never be underestimated in a Victory, even when success looks unlikely.

Paul Mifsud Trophy

The second race of the day was the Paul Mifsud memorial trophy and all the boats that took part in the first race also participated in the second race except for a couple of changes – Hamish Risso took over the helm from Charlie Lavarello in Nemesis and Charlie Stagnetto’s Fairdawn had to pull out.

The first part of the race was a close one between Nick Cruz in Eos and Hamish Risso in Nemesis, and despite Nick almost passing Hamish on the first run down to Western Beach, Hamish managed to keep his nerve and finally record a win after a pretty torrid season.

Unfortunately, the season ended on a bit of a low point with Niña breaking its mast in the last run of the season, but at least they now have 6 months to sort it out.

And so as another season ends, all eyes focus on the future once again and boat owners will be busy over the winter fixing and preparing their boats for the 2025 season in the hope that they too can be like Lavarello and call themselves King Cup winners in the coming years.