This was the first time many of us had been to (or heard of) Pobierowo but by the end of 3 days of racing it was a small Polish town we will remember very well.
The event kicked off on Friday morning with most of the fleet (there was only 4 of us registered by 8pm on Thursday night) arriving on Friday morning including the PWA guys who had flown or driven through the night to get back from the Slalom event in Fuerteventura which finished the day before.
The forecast for the entire week was 15-20 knots NE (which is sideshore at this beach) but with the hot lands on the Polish coast there is a strong thermal effect here and we were getting winds up to 25-30 knots by the late afternoon earlier in the week.
The first races on Friday kicked off in 20-24 knot winds with a large breaking swell pounding the Polish beach. Steve (after not even sleeping and driving the entire night from Warsaw) was on fire and took 4 bullets easily from Wojtek Brzozowski and Gonzalo Costa Hoevel. There were some pretty mixed results on the first day with many top guys making some mistakes and putting it in the drink at times; I won’t mention any names here… Ross, Arnon, Gonzo, Dennis, Markus, myself…haha.
Saturday was much of a repeat of Friday with the winds a little lighter beginning at around 15-16 knots and increasing to 20 knots by the end of the afternoon. We raced 4 races relatively back to back with just a 20 minute break in between each race. A windward/leeward course with a reach mark at the top was used (in a few slight variations) for the entire which proved to be a nice easy course for many of us to get back in to the swing of ‘formula racing’ after a lot of slalom sailing in the strong winds that have been floating around Europe the past few months.
Steve had a little more inconsistent day only managing to take one bullet allowing Wojtek and Gonzalo to catch up however he still held the lead by the end of racing with a second drop now in place.
The highlight of Saturday was a Polish rescue team truck (a BIG one, with offroad wheels and the like) managing to almost submerge itself in the soft sand at the entrance to the water and it took about 3 hours, another 4WD, 15 guys with tow cables, shovels and blocks of wood to get the thing out! Not to mention the fact the guy in the second 4WD nearly ran over a bunch of 20 people trying to do a u-turn in the soft sand to get in position to tow the truck out.
Sunday started off with lighter winds around 10 knots and with the racing having to finish at 3pm we only had time to run 3 races. The first race which had a fairly lightwind start had some carnage with a fairly hardcore port/starboard collision between some of the Polish sailors. This allowed Steve to get a clear start at the pin as the crash happened behind him and blocked everyone else – he took the bullet convincingly. Race 2 and 3 on Sunday had the winds increasing up to 20 knots by the last race and most of us had changed down to 11.0’s by the final race. Steve had a shocker in race 2 coming 7th and allowing Wojtek and Gonzalo to take 1st and 2nd however he followed up the final race (he’d already won the contest by now and didn’t even need to race this one) by taking a sweet bullet.
After Steve’s Polish speech at the prizegiving; (which was done right at the beach with a decent crowd of Polish holidaymakers checking it out) we were all asked to join the winners on the stage for a group competitors photo. The small stage couldn’t handle the weight and the entire thing collapsed into a mess of broken wood on the beach. Pretty fun! But I imagine it was a disaster for the organisers as they were to have a concert with a rock band playing on that stage starting an hour or so after we trashed it.
All in all, another FANTASTIC Polish event and it never ceases to amaze me the level of organisation at these events and the enthusiasm of all the Polish people involved with event.
We are all heading to Leba now for the European Championships starting later this week. This event was a perfect warmup with 11 races happening over 3 days.
Final results were:
1. Steve Allen
2. Wojtek Brzozowski
3. Gonzalo Costa Hoevel
4. Michal Polanowski
5. Hubert Mokrzycki
6. Ross Williams
7. Dennis Littel
8. Arnon Dagan
9. Lukasz Konieczny
10. Pawel Hlavaty
11. Sean O’Brien
12. Leszek Rutkowski
For more info about this event check out the full daily reports and videos/images from AUS120.com on this link:
www.aus120.com
Or check out all the videos from AUS120.com here:
http://www.viddler.com/explore/SeanAUS120/videos/19/
Sean O’Brien
(AUS120.com)
