Wind stalls Tropea foiling races, Aeronautica Militare wins offshore stage

Tropea produced a split-screen day on June 26: the Waszp and WingFoil inshore races never really got off the ground, while Aeronautica Militare won the offshore stage after the Figaro fleet arrived in daylight from Syracuse. Guardia di Finanza chased it all the way to second, but the long-haul result was settled far from shore while the foiling classes were still waiting for the wind to settle.

Light, unstable air stopped the close-to-the-beach action before it could become a real contest. The race committee gathered the Waszp athletes at 12:00, hoping a thermal breeze would build, but the wind never broke the 5-knot barrier and both Waszp starts were abandoned after brief lifts in pressure collapsed again. For WingFoil and Waszp, that kind of volatility does more than delay a schedule. It changes the shape of the sport, because the classes depend on getting foils flying quickly and cleanly in front of spectators, with enough consistency to keep starts fair and racing legible.

The offshore fleet, by contrast, delivered the day’s decisive sporting result. The Figaro boats completed an approximately 50-hour passage from Syracuse, a run that covered two full days and two nights of shifting wind, current, fatigue and tactical transitions. Aeronautica Militare managed the changes best and took the stage win, while Guardia di Finanza stayed in the fight until the final miles before settling for second.

That contrast captures why the Marina Militare Nastro Rosa Tour has become so much more than a single-format regatta. The 2026 edition runs from June 4 to July 12 over 1,250 nautical miles and 40 days around Italy’s coasts, with stops at Venice, Cattolica, Vieste, Taranto, Syracuse, Tropea, Naples and Portoferraio. In Tropea, the race village on the seafront under the Sanctuary of Santa Maria dell’Isola drew strong public interest, and a talk on Calabria’s growth, tourism and exports featured Luca Andreoli, Giovanni Macrì and Giovanni Calabrese.

The day ended with the crews leaving Tropea for Naples, but the lesson stayed clear: offshore crews can still turn a hard sea into a result, while inshore foiling lives and dies on whether the wind arrives in time.