First day at Lake Como F16 Euro Challenge

Report after the first day.


There was a light start of the day with not much wind and during the start the wind was still building and it was shown that you needed to know how it works here because Riccardo on the Blade went to the right and the rest of the fleet went to the left. The right was the way to go on the first beat and Riccardo was first at the mark. The Viper pro ‘s where following him and passed him during the downwind leg. In the mean time the wind was building and the single handers had no change at all anymore because the wind was increasing to 17/18 knots and there where spots where it reached the 20knts. It was a 2 hander wind and the same is expected today.

After the first race the Vipers where in front with Federico & Luca following close on the aquaRaptor but they missed the gate so they had a DNF in race 1. They did well in race 2 and 3 with a 7 and 7 just behing the Viper pro's.

The new aquaRaptor is performing well but you see that there is sailing time on the boats needed to get them quick. I personally found out that I did not sailed enough on the boat so far, there is increasing of the speed going thru the races yesterday and I am getting back the feeling. Let you know more about it later on.

In the 2nd and third race the wind was still around the 17 knts and the single handers where work very hard to keep the boats going and where fighting in the back of the field. The special attention needed to go to Geert because he did 2 races as the only real single hander. It was very impressive to see him going up wind with one hand and handle the wind and gusts and even more impressive to see him go with the spinnaker , the pulling up and bringing down with 1 arm is a difficult and I must say

GO GEERT GO.

The races for today are scheduled to start at 13.00 again with 3 races to go.

The classification after today ( with modification made after writing errors )

1. Visser/Feenstra 7 pnt

2. Waterrhouse/Darmanin 8 pnt

3. Brouwer/Wardley 10 pnt

4. Van Helden/Goodall 12 pnt

5. Feenstra/Bundock 13 pnt

6. Sicouri/Sicouri 13 pnt

7. De Bruyne/Vandenbulcke 25 pnt

8. Sproat/Jury 26 pnt

9. Warren/Powter 27 pnt

10. Farina/Bertani 31 pnt

11. Klok 33 pnt

12. Ceriani/Mazzucchi 45 pnt

13. Pressdee 45 pnt

14. Todd 46 pnt

15. Noyau 51 pnt

16. Ruesink 51 pnt