Tornado World Championship at Yacht Club de la Grande Motte - Day 5
by International Tornado Class Association 14 Jul 2018 12:09 BST
13 July 2018
Tornado World Championship - Day 5 © Nikos Pantis
After a rather busy rest day with the visit to a vineyard and the lunch on site, the teams went straight back to competition.
Competitors were quite anxious at the skippers' meeting, which was held at 11 o'clock in the morning. There was no wind from the North, as usual, and they were afraid there will be no wind in the afternoon, too. Luckily, an afternoon sea breeze got in and boat set sails.
Leaders on both open and mixed are the same, once again. Dany Paschalidis and Petros Konstantinidis had another excellent performance after scoring 2 more bullets today. The same could be said about Estela Jentsch and Daniel Brown who stand first in the mixed and third in the overall ranking!
After one hour of postponement ashore, the start of the 6th race took place with 10 to 12 knots of wind at 2:45PM. It was a very clear start for GRE 1 that took the lead from the very beginning. She stayed at the first place during the whole race. The only boats trying to be placed ahead of GRE 1, were the German ones. It was a beautiful "team effort", among GER 11, GER 211 and GER 44, trying to overtake GRE 1, but they did not manage to do so.
ITA 46 made a wrong choice during the first beat, and rounded mark N1 in twelfth place. Despite their improved performance afterwards, ITA 46 finished ninth which was definitely not a good result for them.
A new starting sequence began just five minutes after the finish of the last boat, in lighter winds, ranging from 8 to 10 knots.
AUT 3, the mixed crew of Dietmar and Silvia Salzman was the first boat closest to the pin end. They managed to beat all the other boats that tried to pass them to windward. Three seconds before the start, AUT 3 departed at full speed, keeping her position during the first lap.
With a tactical masterclass on the second beat, GRE 1 came again at the first place, despite various manoeuvres of AUT 3. The Greeks finished with a 28" gap ahead of the Australians, who now stand second in the rankings of the mixed division.
The third place for the seventh race took another mixed crew, CZE 62, with Pavlis and Michaela Pavlisova. After a very good sixth place at the race before they now stand in fourth mixed with equal points to Jürgen and Sarah Jentsch who stand in third.
Tonight all crews will dine, trying out local fish recipes, at the YCM.
On Saturday, which is going to be the last day of racing, two races are scheduled. The skippers' meeting will be held much earlier than the day before, at 09:00 instead of 11:00, aiming for an earlier start, too. This time, at 10:00.