Torrevieja Team one of the World’s Best

Usually, when someone local is bidding to be world champion from Torrevieja, it’s a fairly well known fact. This year a team from Torrevieja will possibly be second or third in the world, while running on the preverbal shoestring, compared to their rivals. The sport is Class 1 powerboating; the water-sports equivalent of Formula 1, featuring the fastest water racing craft in the world. The team is Team Spain, run by Domenico Cirilli of Duemme Yacht Broker Spain S.L. based in Torrevieja.

The team features Italian Driver Guido Cappellini and fellow countryman Giampaolo Montavoci the Throttleman, with Domenico Cirilli being both Team Manager and Reserve Drive. Making the boat as compeditive as it can be on their limited budget is local engine wizard Oscar Sikken, their Chief Mechanic and Luke Talbot. Oscar is well known for his business Marine Engines S.L. based in Marina Salinas, Torrevieja but it’s the team’s driver Guido Cappellini, who provides that something special. Cappellini has dominated the F1 Powerboat Championship for the last two decades, winning the World title ten-times, taking 62 race wins and 70 Pole Position wins. His experience in this, his first season behind the wheel of the Class 1 boat, has upset a lot of the more established teams, many of then with ten times the budget of Team Spain!

Last week, with two more races to go, Team Spain donned the Sponsorship colours of GSG Ceramic Design but it would prove to be frustrating weekend due to technical problems and crashes which affected their chances of a podium finish. In the end, defending World Champions Arif Al Zafeen and Nadir Bin Hendi produced a Championship winning drive to clinch a tenth World title for Dubai’s ‘Victory Team’, winning a dramatic and incident filled Race 2 of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, with two separate incidents involving Victory 2010 and a collision between Skydive Dubai and Negotiator, forcing race officials to immediately red flag the race and call for a restart. All this compounded an already frustrating weekend for Guido Cappellini and Giampaolo Montavoci in GSG Ceramic Design, which ended with them stopping just minutes after the restart and that was that for Abu Dhabi!

The final two races of the season take place in Dubai, 9-11 December with the Torrevieja Team presently forth with 72 points but in with a realistic chance of being promoted to third, should they perform well. The local offshoot of all the efforts from Domenico Cirilli and Oscar Sikken is that Class 1 officials have already inspected Torrevieja as a possible location for a future racing site, effectively bringing a world championship event to Torrevieja’s shores. A mouth-watering prospect that could further establish the city as one of the top yachting destinations on the Mediterranean. 

Richard Street and the Temptations in Concert

If you love Motown and Soul music, there is only one place you should be on Friday night, and that is at the Orihuela Costa Resort to see the one and only Richard Street and His Temptations in Concert. Richard Street may not be a household name but for 22 years, from 1971, he fronted The Temptations and sang on such legendary tracks as ‘Just My Imagination (Running away with me)’, ‘Masterpiece’, ‘Treat her like a Lady’ and ‘Papa was a Rolling Stone’. Richard Street and The Temptations perform, for one night only, December 3, so don’t miss your opportunity for a great night out.

Richard began his music career at the tender age of 12, playing piano and singing. In 1955, Richard was invited to join a vocal group: Otis Williams and The Distants, which led to his recoding with the Monitors, which were signed to Motown. Primarily a session singer, he lent his tenor to sweeten vocal tracks, but stayed away from the public eye. This placed him in the unique setting of being the voice behind many of the lead vocals for The Temptations; although, no one saw him in the group. For almost two-years he was on the microphone in the wings as Paul Williams, whose health was in decline, lip-synched to Richard’s vocals! In 1971, Williams departed from the group and Richard assumed his rightful place with the Temptations as lead singer.

He delighted television, stage, radio and record-buying audiences with his leads on such classic tracks as "Heavenly", "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", "Firefly", "Hey Girl", "Masterpiece", "Every Time I Close My Eyes", "I'll Keep My Light In My Window", "Super Star", "Show Me Your Love", "Bare Back", "Standing On the Top", "Love Comes At Christmas", from the Christmas album "Everything for Christmas", "Papa Was a Rolling Stone", and many more. Among the awards Richard has received are three Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, and an NAACP Award. He was also there when The Temptations were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.


The show is promoted by Heatwave Promotions who previously brought Ray Lewis and The Drifters, Alexander O’Neal plus The Real Thing to the Resort. Tickets can be purchased from The Orihuela Costa Resort Hotel, The Post Room Benijofar, Sunworld in Los Dolses, by calling the ticket hotline numbers 966 792 595 or 965 724 939 or even ordering them online by visiting the website at www.heatwavepromotions.com. An online payment facility allows for tickets to be paid for from the comfort of your own home and collected on the night of the show

Queen Elizabeth visits Alicante

The arrival of Cunard’s newest vessel, the Queen Elizabeth into Alicante last Monday became very much a Torrevieja affair. Captain Chris Wells used to have a holiday home in Rocio del Mar until very recently,  entertainer Simon John is performing onboard and yours truly used to oversee the entire video operation for the cruise line. On the visitor list were over thirty regulars from the Freewheelers, Phoenix Car Club and Club Torrevieja Classics and Specialists Cars plus the dignitaries included representation from Torrevieja’s Town Hall through Pedro Valero, the councillor for Foreign Residents and New technology and Graham Knight, Director of the Foreign Residents Office. 

 Although boarding the vessel was fraught with difficulties, names missing from lists, different lists that didn’t match up and lists that were just, missing, most but not all those that came to visit eventually made it onboard and were treated to a tour of the ship. It should be said that local Shipping Agent Mundomar, did not come out of the visit with flying colours.

Queen Elizabeth herself christened the ship on October 11, 2010 and this was only her third cruise. She is 92,000 gross registered tons, 294 metres long, 33 meters across (beam), has 12-decks above the waterline, can cruise at 23.7 knots an hour and has a capacity of 2,092 guests. In relative terms, the ill-fated Titanic was about half the size of the Cunard’s newest vessel, being 46,328 gross registered tones but almost as long at 269.1 metres, had nine-decks, held 3,547 passengers with 860 crew and a top speed of 23 knots per hour. The Queen Elizabeth is the length of three football fields, as high as the tallest apartment building in Torrevieja and offers more hotel beds than is available in the entire city of Torrevieja!

At 1100-hrs, President of the Port Authority of Alicante, Miguel Campoy, presented the ship's captain, Chris Wells, with a miniature replica of an air compressor used in the past to supply oxygen from the surface to divers working under the sea, because the site of the Cruise Pier is the former headquarters of the local institution. In return, Wells presented Campoy with a plaque while posing in front of a silver scale model of ‘Queen Elizabeth 2’. Wells thanked the President for his gift and noted that “the Queen Elizabeth is the most modern cruise ship in the world and so our gift to you is a modern plaque representing the new era or Cunard.”

The ship was built at the Fincantieri shipyard in Monfalcone (Italy) to replace the QE2, which made its last voyage in 2008, before being sold to Dubai. The ship, although with modern furnishing throughout, features a lot of artefacts and design elements which hark back to the 1930’s era, the days of the former Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, before Jet Travel, when the ships carried celebrities, presidents and royalty across the Atlantic and around the world.

The interior decor evokes a feeling of 1930's Art Deco, dominated on one deck by a flowing staircase topped by a huge clock. One of her outstanding features is the Theatre, which has a capacity for over 800 guests, complete with a balcony and boxes, with plenty of leg room and comfort, while the ship has a dozen bars and restaurants, library, reading room, a smoker’s bar, spa, gym, hospital and even an Apple Computer store, complete with iPads, iPods, iMacs and everything Apple!

For more information about the Queen Elizabeth or her sister ships the Queen Victoria or Queen Mary 2, please visit www.cunard.com. There are no plans for her to return to Alicante for 2011 but her 2012 Calendar is still being worked on. For a few lucky people out there, still wondering what to do with themselves in the new year, there still are places available on her 103-day World Cruise, so if you have between €15,000 and €50,000 to spend on a three month vacation, you now have one more option to consider to spoil yourself with for the New Year.