The 4th day of Youth, Junior and Masters World’s in Christchurch was very tough and brought us more fight and some changes to the results. From the very morning we had good side shore wind and we started off at 10 o clock. We had the maximum number of races (4 for Youth and Masters and 3 for Junior and Girls) with an hour lunch brake in the middle. After some problems with the wind shifting and the course standing not straight yesterday, we had only two marks today making the course – upwind and downwind. It would all seem nice and easy if not a gate in the middle of the course that we had to go through on every upwind or downwind with the exception of the first upwind. It of course was the most interesting point on the water as almost on every lap there were some close meetings of racers going up and down both making their way through the 70 meters-wide gate.
From the very beginning of this event the jury decided that Youth as the bigger fleet will be doing one lap more on every race then the others. So it’s not hard to imagine how dead we were after four races, 3 laps each.
I myself had some good races today coming 3rd and 2nd before the break. I was leading the first race today but tacked to early for the upwind mark and didn’t make it. After the break the wind increased but there was such a pressure to go as good as possible that almost nobody changed their sail for smaller. As a result we’ve been fighting our big sails in wind of around 18 knots and after all we were even more tired. I came 5th in both the races after the break. Now as we have only one day to go it looks like Julien Quentel is not reachable as he won all of the 8 races so far. Though we have a very hard fight for the other places as many sailors changed on the top positions throughout the races.
It may be hard to believe for you but we had really nice weather today and some of us even got a bit of sun tan…
At the moment the results are as below:
Youth fleet:
1 Julien Quentel – FRA 421
2 Vincent Langer – GER 122
3 Robert Baldyga – POL 18
4 Leszek Rutkowski – POL 220
5 “little Antoine Albeau” – FRA 586
6 Patryk Hronowski – POL 739
Women fleet:
1 Jennifer Kesik – POL 215
2 Agnieszka Pietrasik – POL 193
3 Amy Carter – GBR 85
Junior U17 fleet
1 Pierre Morfuen – FRA 14
2 Daniel Simpson – GBR 323
3 Maciek Rutkowski – POL 232
Junior U15 fleet
1 Maciek Rutkowski – POL 232
2 Oliver Tom Schlieman – GER 16
3 Michael Aftowicz – POL 243
Masters flet
1. “Nice Guy” – EST 202
2. Rysiu Pikul – POL 40
I’m very sorry and please excuse me for all the mistakes, misspell and lacks in the results but I don’t have the official results from the organizers yet and I’m trying to remember all the things.
Very best regards to everybody
Leszek Rutkowski Pol- 220
(Starboard; Severne Sails; Deemeed)
www.pol220.com
