Austrian Musto Skiff Nationals at Lake Attersee
by Felix Luchterhand 20 Sep 2008 08:08 BST
6-7 September 2008
On September 6 / 7th, 2008 the first Austrian Musto Skiff Nationals has been held at Lake Attersee and organized by the Austrian Musto Skiff Class Federation and Sailing Club Attersee. Due to great effort and development work we had a total of 12 MPS Sailors (8 Austrian, 3 German and 1 Slovenian) who joined this event which twice the entry compared to 2007!
On Saturday morning Lake Attersee provided us with a clear sky, light easterly winds of 2 Bft called “Rose Wind”, maybe a little more. We had great up and down 4 races hardly trapezing. In the evening all sailors were invited for a great dinner.
On Sunday we expected the same weather conditions, but the weather gods made the decision for a westerly wind condition with a few clouds. At least it was dry. The wind start to shift around so the judges had a hard time getting the course ready.
From the sailing wise the nationals started to develop as a match between our local matador Martin Mayrhofer (24 at the world championship on Lake Silverplana) and Mitja Margon from Slovenia. At the end with equal points our guest Mitja won this event followed by Martin. A small comfort for Martin as the first Austrian champion ever followed by our German guests Christian Häring and Markus Mühlbauer.
Quite interesting was the family battle between Günther Zieher and his son Moritz. Moritz (15 year old young gun) made fifth place overall, one point in front of Günther. In the Austrian ranking he ended up 2nd at the Austrian nationals. A typical comment from Günther, “It was time that my son did better than me after I did invest so much in him!”
This event was very different for the worlds participants at Lake Silverplana. Gerald Richtarski had to quit the fourth race due to collision with a Contender sailor. He was unable to discard this race. Felix Luchterhand was the superior leader with 150 m to the 2nd boat in the the 5 th race which was fired up due to the lake of wind on the last down winder.
It was a great regatta weekend in this fast growing class. At this weekend 4 new potential sailors tested the interesting Musto Performance Skiff with our local MPS Dealer. One prospect decided to join the class in 2009 and decided then and there to buy an MPS! The Austrian Class Federation is in the process of organising next year's MPS events.
Beside the Austrian Nationals two more racing events and a Spring training session are scheduled for 2009 in Austria.
Overall Results: (top 3)
1st 271, Mitja Margon/SCP (SLO) 8pts
2nd 381, Martin Mayrhofer / SCATT (AUT) 8pts
3rd 72, Christian Häring/SGD (GER) 12pts