2006 Eastern Hemisphere Championship

This report is late as usual. From the time the Eastern Hemispheres ended, I've been in airports, taxis, on a TP 52 and a coach boat. I am now sitting on the ground outside the food store in Hyeres where there is a small area of internet connectivity. They are having the Olympic classes regatta here this week and today is the day of the medal races. Hopefully, my girlfriend, Lenka, and her crew Elizabeth Kratzig can pull out a good one and move into the top 3 in the 470s. They are in 6th at the moment, but very close.

Anyway, back to the Star regatta. It was a great turnout with about 70 boats showing up to the castle at Naples. My arrival was a bit on the late side, but Strube's was even worse. He flew in at about 11pm the night before the first race. Instead of being able to fly straight into Naples like my crew, I went first to Milan where I picked up our borrowed boat at the Folli factory. A beautiful, hardly used folli, number 8220. I drove it down to Naples (about 10 hours), then rigged it, washed, polished and launched it all by myself while Strube was on his way, lugging about 7 star mains through the streets of London. Luckily everything worked out, and we got special permission to weigh Strube in the morning of the race.

We were all ready to go on the first morning, went out and won the race.

It was a very light and shifty one, and eventually a few upset teams got the race thrown out, but a good way to start anyway. Many hours on the water on day 2 led to no racing yet again. The wind just would not cooperate. We had 3 days to go and no racing yet.

On day 3, the wind began to work for us and from that day on, we got 2 a day and managed to get all 6 races in. Most were sailed in a seabreeze type wind that would start light and usually build to around 12-15. Some really nice waves as well. Our speed was good and we finally started getting some good starts. The first day was a 5, 8 for us which put us in third place, behind George and Eric and John and Austin for an all american top 3. Pretty cool. Next day we had about 13 points in the two races again, but I don't exactly remember our scores. I know it was a day of comebacks though. We actually moved up to 2nd, but weren't looking so good with the throwout.

For the last day, Freddy was leading and we were about 5 points back.

But there were about 8 boats that could have won it. We had 2 races, the first being our throwout, and also a throwout for Freddy. So we still had a shot at it going into the last race. George and John Dane had a chance as well, as did Rohart and one of the Italian teams. The last race, I remember well. We had a great start at the pin, which was favored by about 15 degrees. Knowing that the right was going to pay, we tacked soon after the start and had the whole fleet in our window. Slowly though, the right started paying and the boats on our hip further left started looking really bad. The effect of the right was equal to Long Beach times 2. By the time the lead boats on the right tacked, there were probably about 15 or so crossing us. We went over to them as far as we could and layed up inside. From there we somehow layed the mark, while the right most boats had to crack way off to reach in. We rounded 2nd and got into the lead on the first run. Freddy was in the hunt as well, in about 4th though, so we had to hope we held on, and that he would lose a couple places. We couldn't extend on the next beat, and the Italians, Luca Modena and crew were right on our stern at the final top mark before the run to the finish. Freddy was a solid 3rd, so barring disaster he was going to win the regatta. We just wanted our first, especially after having been robbed of it on the first day. Anyway, to make a short story even shorter, Luca passed us on the run because I gybed too early and we got a 2nd in the race. This left us in 2nd for the regatta as well.

The Yacht Club Savoia was great and the regatta volunteers were very friendly and helpful. There was a really nice 5 or 6 course dinner one night, but we could only eat 3 because of the spot weight checks. All in all, a slow start, but a very nice finish.

Next regatta will be the Western Hemispheres in Annapolis. I will let you know how it goes.

Mark