Photo Medcup Media

In Alicante sixteen TP52 are racing for the first stage of the Audi Medcup 2008, one of them, the german "Platoon" has had a very uncommon encounter on the first day of regattas: a big shark!

What's more is that comparing the size of the shark with the TP 52 length it seems that the shark should be around 7 - 7,5 meters. Considering that the biggest White Shark ever found, captured in Malta, measured 7,10 meters and that the biggest shark specie, the Whale Shark, could reach the 12 meters, the unidentified shark in the picture was a real beast.

Reuters

Yestarday in Bangkok there was a crocodile hatching festival (!) at Sriracha Tiger Zoo, 120 km (74 miles) east of the capital city of Thailand. The zoo consists of more than 200 Bengal tigers and 100,000 crocodiles. Enjoy the pictures from Reuters


Reuters

Reuters

Reuters

Reuters

Reuters

©ThMartinez/Sea&Co
The start in Plymouth

The oldest solo ocean race in history, The Artemis Transat is a 2,800 mile race across the North Atlantic alone... Held every four years since 1960, the 2008 edition of the race has started from Plymouth, UK on Sunday, 11th May. Thirteen Imoca 60 and eleven Class 40 run this year race. Follow the race on the official site


Photo by Stefano Gattini

The favorite competitors should be the winners of the Transat Jacques Vabre 2007, Giovanni Soldini on Telecom Italia for the Class 40 and Michel Desjoyeaux on Foncia for the Imoca

Photo by Guido Trombetta
The start of a Melges32 Regatta with the Malcesine Castle on the background

In the last days, like the previous weekend, I couldn't update the blog because I was out working: this time in the Audi Melges 32 Sailing Series in Malcesine for the first regatta in Europe of this new and spectacular class. Many experts say that Melges 32 will rapidly grow in number of boats and stature. Vincenzo Onorato has just bought one of these boats and rumours tell that Larry Ellison and Ernesto Bertarelli are going to do the same.

Luigi Amedeo Melegari onboard Matrix is the winner of the inaugural Audi Melges 32 Sailing Series 2008.
Three days of great racing organised by Audi in collaboration with the Fraglia Vela Malcesine, has delivered action to the Melges 32 fleet and its competitors!
There were many possibilities as to who could be among the contendors of the Audi Melges 32 Sailing Series and first to respond was Matrix. Melegari showed great consistency in every race including two first places finishes amongst nine races. The next stage is Cagliari, scheduled to end in June where Matrix will bear the leader's red number on its bow. They were also presented with the red leader's jersey.

More Info on the official Melges32 website

Enjoy the pics:

Photo by Guido Trombetta

Photo by Guido Trombetta

Photo by Guido Trombetta

Photo by Guido Trombetta

Photo by Guido Trombetta

Photo by Guido Trombetta

Reuters

AFP/Getty images

AFP/Getty images

Today in Seville is the last day of competitions of the World Open Water Swimming Championships 2008. The athletes have competed in masculine and feminine contests of 5, 10 and 25 km, swimming in the Guadalquivir River.


AP photo by Armando Franca

AP photo by Miguel Angel Morenatti

Reuters

AP photo by Armando Franca

AP photo by Armando Franca

AFP/Getty images

AP photo by Armando Franca

Nathalie Du Toit the South African amputee swimmer (Paralympic gold medallist) finished fourth in the 10km swim, which was incredible if you think that she had to compete with two-legged athletes, and good enough to qualify for the Olympics.
Du Toit will now become the first amputee athlete to compete in a swim event in Olympic history.


AP photo by Armando Franca
Natalie Du Toit

AP photo by Miguel Angel Morenatti
Natalie Du Toit at the start

AP photo by Armando Franca
Natalie Du Toit

It seems that the animal world will never stop astonishing me. In this months of blogging I've collected a lot of story about animals related to water that seem incredible to me. Today it's the turn of Comet, a common goldfish, who has been trained to play soccer! and it's not enough... it can also do the limbo, play basketball, slalom and do many other tricks..
Look the videos:









What's more is that if you have a goldfish, you could train it to do the same tricks using the operant conditioning positive reinforcement technique...
What is it? Click here for more.

(AP Photo/Young Kwak)

After The incredible story of Pierre the penguin here we are again with another touching story of humans helping animals. This time, however, everything started from human wickedness:
The Bald Eagle you can see above has been named Beauty, she was found two years ago scrounging for food and slowly starving to death at a landfill in Alaska. Most of her curved upper beak had been shot away... she could not clutch or tear at food. She has great troubles even in drinking and cleaning her feathers.
Beauty was taken to a bird recovery center in Anchorage, where she was hand-fed for two years. Now a team of volunteers is working to keep her alive. Calvin, a mechanical engineer, offered to design an artificial beak. A dentist, veterinarian and other experts eventually volunteered to help.
Molds were made of the existing beak parts and scanned into a computer, so the bionic beak could be created as accurately as possible.


(AP Photo/Young Kwak)

(AP Photo/Young Kwak)
Biologist Jane Fink Cantwell feeds Beauty, a rescued Alaskan bald eagle, salmon using forceps

Read more here

and watch the video:

Open Season & Magic Carpet 2 in front of the Portofino Lighthouse
©Photo: Guido Trombetta

I've been far from the blog for almost a week beacuse I was in Santa Margherita and Portofino to work in the "Trofeo Pirelli - Coppa Carlo Negri", the famous regattas organized by Yacht Club Italiano and Pirelli that every year bring more than one hundred boats in the sea between Portofino and Santa Margherita Ligure.
Sadly for all the week the wind was very low, but the show was guaranteed by the presence of many of the top sailors like the Alinghi crew on board Neville Crichton's "Alfa Romeo" or the crews of the eight hard-fighting GP42.
The overall winner of the Carlo Negri Cup has been Atalanta II of Carlo Puri Negri. El desafio has been the winner in the GP42 class.
Enjoy the pictures:


Y3K
©Photo: Guido Trombetta


©Photo: Stefano Gattini


©Photo: Guido Trombetta


Crews preparing the boats in the docks of Santa Margherita
©Photo: Stefano Gattini


GP42 Race start
©Photo: Stefano Gattini


007 Seawonder and El Desafio
©Photo: Stefano Gattini


J one
©Photo: Guido Trombetta


©Photo: Stefano Gattini


Atalanta II
©Photo: Stefano Gattini


©Photo: Stefano Gattini


©Photo: Stefano Gattini


J one and Kauris III in front of the Portofino's Lighthouse
©Photo: Guido Trombetta