July 22, 2019
Marblehead Trophy started in St. Petersburg
On Sunday, July 21, the opening ceremony of the Marblehead Trophy 2019 regatta in the Dragon Yacht class took place at the Yacht Club in St. Petersburg.
© Elena Razina
22 teams from yacht clubs of Great Britain, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Russia, Finland, France and Estonia are allowed to participate in the races. All of them gathered in the main tent of the regatta, where the leaders of the organizing committee and representatives of the judiciary turned to them.
The president of the Russian Dragon Class Association, Boris Latkin, recalled that the Marblehead Trophy 2019 is a jubilee regatta with a 90-year history. Becoming a part of this story is a great honor for the organizers and participants of the competition. “I hope we will with great pleasure and in fair competition determine who will own the cup all next year,” said Latkin.
The regatta director Tatyana Kurbatova in her welcoming speech also wished the teams an interesting wrestling and recalled that in addition to competitions, the regatta offers its participants an interesting coastal program. Among the surprises is a sponsored lottery, excursions in St. Petersburg, a traditional dinner from the host organization. “We hope that the days spent in our city will long remain in your memory!”
Fears of the judges regarding the weather conditions (the forecast promised calm weather) by the time of the first start were dispelled by a completely stable westerly wind blowing at a speed of 7-8 knots. The first race of the regatta lasted just over an hour. It is interesting to note that all the teams representing foreign yacht clubs, these sixty minutes were in the top ten. True, they did not succeed in waving to the leading position – Anatoly Loginov confidently headed from the start to the finish. Teams from Portugal, Great Britain, as well as Dmitry Samokhin representing the yacht port “Hercules”, succeeding each other, chased the crew of the cup winners. However, they did not succeed in this struggle.
The second race of the day confirmed the well-known truth that defending the cup to its owners is not an easy task. The contenders for the historic trophy have enough desire, strength and skills to fight hard for an honorary prize. Portuguese Pedro Andrade was the first on the top sign and on the gate, and only in the last full course he lost the fight to Anatoly Loginov and Dmitry Samokhin. The teams of Gerard Blanc and Dmitry Bondarenko finished closely behind the leaders. This time Samokhin celebrated his victory, who scored 4 points for the day. One point less for Loginov, one more point for Portuguese riders.
Pedro Andrade (Portugal):
– In the first race, we tried to hold on to Anatoly Loginov and at some point even came close to get ahead of him, but … We started the second race quite well, successfully started, were in the lead on the first loop, but then the wind played bad with us a joke, and by the time we reached the top mark for the second time, our rivals had already caught up with us. And here on the rounding we made the biggest mistake in this race, we made an extra turn instead of going to the finish line immediately. I think the reason for this was the loss of concentration – our fatigue, caused by the fact that we arrived late on the eve, and had to prepare the boat for the races early in the morning, had an effect. As a result, they lost two places to their closest rivals.
First day results –
http://marblehead.russiandragon.ru/results/
147 July 22, 2019 # 9288
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