28/03/2014
Sailing Stars Final
Sunday 23 March marked the final of the Sail First Sailing Stars winter competition off Latchi Marina in Cyprus. Eight crews from across the island gathered on a sunny morning at the entrance to the marina where the J80 boats moored. There were two teams from Famagusta. Nautical club(4,7), Two from Paphos International Sailing Club(2,5), one from Limassol Nautical Club (10), One combined Russian/Ukrainian Team(8), Bikini Team from Marina Stores (9) and an International scratch team(6). The wind was light and variable blowing in from the sea which delayed the start of the first two planned races.
The first course was laid out as a two round windward/leeward sausage out into the bay. All boats made a clean start and the first to show were three of the favourite boats who chose to tack onto port after the start, however three boats at the port end of the line gained when the wind backed and were able to close in on the leaders leaving two boat from PISC as tail end charlies,
On the downwind leg boats number 6 and 4 had a tussle under genekers swooping place a couple of times, whilst this was happening boat number 8 also managed to blanket number 6 and slip past. Before the boats could reach the leeward mark, the race was shortened to allow the yachts to finish, so that they only completed half the course. The first race was won by number 7, followed by numbers 10 and 9.
The start of the second race was delayed due to the continuing light and variable winds and unfortunately when the race was finally started there were a couple of incidents at the start which would later effect the results of the regatta. The second race was a straight race around one mark laid to windward then back to the starting line, once again the boats in the middle and port end of the line had the best starts with several boats been protested at the committee boat end. Boat number 10 was the first to round the windward mark followed by number 9 and number 6, which hit the mark and subsequently completed a penalty turn on the downwind leg.
The downwind leg became something of a cliffhanger as first one boat then another fell into holes and stopped, some boats initially flew genekers before stowing them. The three leading boats kept to starboard side of the course downwind, whilst number 6 headed directly downwind a tactic that put them back in contention despite the penalty turn. First to cross the finish line was boat number 7 followed once again by boats numbers 10,9 and 6. three boats failed to finish within the time limited.
The prize giving was delayed in order to allow the protest committee time to hear the protests, which resulted in boat number 7 being disqualified so the Sail first Sailing Stars grand prize of 2,500 EUR was awarded to boat number 10 Limassol Nautical Club skippered by Demetris Demetriou and crewed by Joanne Demetriou, Katerine Lordanou, Panayiootis Lordanou and Socratis Lordanou.
