A variety of wind conditions, tides, nationalities, sun & rain, … made these first 9 days of the summer already very interesting! A build up of 4 days towards the Topsport Vlaanderen Nieuwpoortweek (Flanders youth Regatta) was successful if we look at the results at the end of a 5-day regatta.
During the first two days of the regatta we had similar strong wind conditions, waves around 1 meter, by then we sailed 4 races and results were looking good for the whole group. On the third day wind wasn’t the easiest and kept on shifting right! For this reason we had a long day on the water but at the end we were able to sail 3 fair races. On Monday evening the qualifying’s were finished and the fleets got split up into Gold & Silver. So we could start on Tuesday morning with the finals, according to plan. This was definitely a light wind day and we just sailed 3 races before wind died completely. On the last day of the event the forecast was rather though, wind blowing North 25 knots increasing to 35, even 40 knots in the late afternoon. So the race committee decided to stay in for the day as it was to dangerous to get out in these huge waves at the end of the harbour and wind blowing so strong. This decision meant that yesterday all 3 races did count and none of those 3 could be used as a discard. Well done to the whole team, special shout out to numbers 1,2,3,5 and 9 of the Gold fleet & number 3 and 10 of the silver fleet! Full results can be seen here. Great work guys keep it up this summer!
Anna Debruycker (BEL 1137) full hiking over the decent waves