Cesenatico's Easter Sails Regatta Welcomes Catamarans to Adriatic Racing

The Congrega Velisti Cesenatico marked half a century of Easter racing this weekend as the 50th Vele di Pasqua filled the northern Adriatic with roughly 200 sails across twin courses positioned half a mile off the Romagna Riviera promenade. Catamarans, which the event's own promotion has long called the "Formula One of the sea," competed in dedicated classes including the International A-Class in both Classic and Open divisions, and the Hobie 14, the latter carrying additional weight as a round of the Dinsdale Trophy Euro Cup series.

The racing unfolded across two separate courses, Levante and Ponente, each set half a mile offshore and structured to mix tactical windward-leeward legs with reaching stretches. That layout plays directly to multihull speed: on the reaching segments, Class A and Hobie fleets expose the kind of performance gap that makes cat racing technically demanding and spectator-compelling in equal measure. Anyone walking the Cesenatico waterfront could track live standings while watching the fleet spread across the water, and admission, as always at Vele di Pasqua, was free.

The catamaran culture in Cesenatico runs deeper than most regatta hosts can claim. Fleet 358 Romagna, one of the oldest Hobie communities in Italy, has been racing here since the late 1970s, and at the biggest editions of Vele di Pasqua, up to 80 Hobie Cats have taken to the water in a single event. The Dinsdale Trophy Euro Cup, which strings HC14 competition across a European season, made Cesenatico a fixture in its calendar, this year carrying added resonance as the series continues to honor the memory of John Dinsdale, a central figure in the global Hobie community who recently passed away.

The performance benchmark arriving from 2025 was set by French sailor Arnaud Thieme, who swept the HC14 field at last year's Cesenatico edition with five race wins and a second place, finishing well ahead of Dan Borg, who had traveled from Canada to compete, and Daniela Groos, who took the top women's result. That margin gave the 50th edition field a clear target.

Class A competition brought its own pedigree. The Associazione Italiana Catamarani Classe A posted 2026 Cesenatico Classic and Open results, continuing a national circuit that enters the season with Lamberto Cesari and Andrea Ruffini as the reigning Italian champions. International crews arrived from the Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland alongside the Italian contingent, a geographic spread that five decades of Easter racing on the Romagna Riviera have steadily built.

For a regatta designed around spectacle as much as standings, the 50th edition made the case that nearshore cat racing belongs in European festival events. Two courses, 200 sails, and a waterfront crowd watching live: the kind of audience that championship-circuit racing rarely produces, and one that catamaran sailing earns every time it comes ashore.