Breezy And Shifty ?? Tough Combination

On day two of the championship yesterday sailors had more opportunity to learn about the difficult, northerly “Bura” wind. It was more shifty than the first day but still pretty shifty and, more importantly, stronger.

Varying in strength between 11 and 18 knots, the committee vessel recorded a highest gust of 22 knots, but sailors were reassured by locals that this is the most unpredictable wind in Croatian waters. Local sailors Matija LONGIN and Pavle KOSTOV, after a bad start at day one, improved their performance and with a third, second and fifth place in the races sailed yesterday, moving to the top of the leaderboard, a feat wildly celebrated at their home club, SC Uskok.

Longin commented on the second day of racing yesterday, ” The wind was very much like the day before. First two races were easier to sail than the last one, it was much harder to score a fifth place in the last race than a second in the race before. I hope that tomorrow we will finally have some sun and the Mistral from the West”

The Greek team of Nikolaos TZANIDAKIS and Andreas PALERAS will not consider yesterday as a good one, although they were very fast in last two races. Instead of scoring two great results, they scored DNF and OCS. In the fifth race they were leading the group, but just before finishing a judge penalized them for pumping, so they retired. They finished first in the sixth race, but their joy did not last long. Another Greek team did well, George VASSILAS and Evangelos MITAKIZ, now placed third.

“We had good races, the third was little bit strange. It is just semi finals. In the finals everything will change. I hope that we will have a good start in the finals and continue good racing. I am certain that it will be very difficult in the finals.” thinks Mitakiz.

So what about the girls fleet? Four general recalls for the first race yesterday, despite the black flag resulted with 18 disqualifications. After that fifth attempt was succesful. The British team must be very satisfied with three teams in top six.

“The Race Officer was kind on the first 2 with postponments but when the black flag appeared the girls were still pushing the line. There is great depth of quality in this fleet and it will be a high scoring regatta. Anyone being consistently in top 10 could take the title” – commented GBR Coach Mark RUSHALL.

And here what Pippa WILSON (GBR), helm of the first European team for the time being, says.” It was very shifty today, and pretty tough conditions, first one was better than the second one, but it was kind of people coming from both sides. The last one was really, really close, all the way to the finish. We had a good day. Racing is tough in these conditions so we are trying to be consistent. We made a few mistakes, we’ll try to cut down the mistakes and be consistent.”

Full results are available on the event website at the address below.

Overall Top Ten

Men

Ladies