OK Dinghy International Regatta on Lake Garda, Italy - Day 2

by Robert Deaves 14 Jul 2021 01:18 BST 12-15 July 2021

The OK Dinghy fleet was up at the crack of dawn on the second day of the International regatta on Lake Garda with three more races sailed from 0800 in a northerly breeze that kept everyone on their toes with some big shifts.

Valérian Lebrun, from France won two races to consolidate his lead, while Germany's Soenke Behrens won the second race to move up to third. An ordinary day from Denmark's Bo Petersen, dropped him to third.

Race 4 got away in 10-15 knots with Lebrun leading round the top. Dirk Gericke, from Germany, smacked the right hard, was second at the top and held on to get third with Behrens coming through to second.

There was slightly more wind for Race 5, which proved a bit trickier for some. Petersen and Lebrun were in the lead but went hard right up the second beat and went from first and second to sixth and eighth. This left Behrens and Greg Wilcox, from New Zealand, in front and they left them fleet a long way behind. Germany's Andreas Pich crossed in third.

Lebrun then led the whole way in Race 6. Wilcox and Petersen were fighting for second, with a small gap to the others. Mogens Johansen, from Denmark, sailed a great second beat and caught right up and then on the last run passed both, while Wilcox passed Petersen when he fell out of the pressure.

Wilcox: "It was quite shifty but not too bad. More pressure lines than shifts."

Jørgen Holm: "We had a nice day. It was really shifty but actually quite fair, with quite often the same people in front but it was really tricky and you had to be awake but a good day good to try to get out even if the weather forecast was not the best."

Lebrun: "It was quite a tough day today because of the stormy weather and a start at 0800, which is pretty unusual for us. I think are most of us were still feeling a bit sleepy for the first race which was pretty windy. And then the wind was still a bit stronger for the second race with most of the fleet going to the left side, but I managed two wins."

After three good races the fleet made it back to shore before the forecast storms hit with very strong winds, heavy rain and even hail.

The fleet returns to the water on Wednesday at 13.00. The regatta continues until Thursday.

Results after Day 2: (top ten, 6 races, 1 discard)

1 FRA 11 Valerian Lebrun 7pts
2 GER 77 Soenke Behrens 13pts
3 DEN 21 Bo Petersen 16pts
4 NZL 599 Greg Wilcox 20pts
5 DEN 1565 Mogens Johansen 33pts
6 GER 7 Andreas Pich 37pts
7 GER 852 Michael Nissen 45pts
8 FRA 1859 Yann Vilein 45pts
9 GER 75 Dirk Dame 47pts
10 GER 5 Ralf Tietje 49pts

Full results available here.