Ballyholme Yacht Club's Liam Glynn is lying second overall in the boys division at the Laser Radial Youth Europeans Championships in Estonia. After four races sailed and one discard applied the former Irish Topper World Champion is a single point off the lead held by Russian Daniil Kruyskikh. Howth Yacht Club's Ewan MacMahon, the silver medal winner at the Radial World Youths in Dun Laoghaire, last month is lying 19th in the 138–boat fleet. Full boys results are here. In the girls division, MacMahon's clubmate Aoife Hopkins is fourth from 48. The girls results are here.
Report below by race organisers
The third racing day at Kalev Yacht Club was far from easy for both the sailors and organisers. Change in wind direction just after the start of the first race called for cancellation. A new start could be given after two hours of waiting only. Still, the day ended with two races under the belt and Gold and Silver fleets for boys. The leaders of the regatta are Carolina Albano from Italy and Daniil Krutskikh from Russia.
The only way to accurately determine weather and wind is by going out there. The weather forecast for today was much more modest than the reality that played out on Tallinn bay. Strong winds with gusts of 18-20 knots became fatal to several masts and caused some minor damage too. PRO Viljar Sepp commented that a long day out on the sea requires a lot of patience both from the sailors and the Race Committee team. „The course is in accordance with championship requirements, which means the duration of one race is 55-60 minutes. Competition gets tougher every day because everyone is fighting for their place both on the starting and finish lines. This causes more false starts – and today was no exception. However, today the 11:00 race had to be cancelled as wind direction changed more than 50 degrees and the course became un-sailable. We were sitting out on the sea for two hours waiting for the winds to change. But after that all went smoothly. The day is so long due to protests filed on the shore and changes that were required in the results as some guys had sailed in the wrong fleet and got worse results because of that.“
The leader Daniil Krutskikh from Russia was second in the third race (first today), but couldn’t fight higher than the 21st position in the next one due to bad positioning in the beginning. But as after the fourth race the worst result is discarded he is still in the lead with one point in front of Liam Glynn from Ireland (70-1-1-3). Yesterday’s third Daniel Whiteley from England is holding on to his position with 2-5-2-(17). Daniil Krutskikh is also leading the U-17 group. Nooa Laukkanen from Finland is second and Milo Gill-Taylor from England third.
Young Daniil Krutskikh won Laser Radial Youth World Championships only a few weeks ago and has sailed in Tallinn before. “I raced here at the 2013 Spinnaker regatta on Optimist and made it to 16th among 147 participants. I’m very grateful to my father who is also my coach who has taught me well how to manage in strong winds. I hope to do as well in the next few days”.
The best Estonian sailor is Tavo Annus from ROPK who has sailed himself to the 37th position. He is the only Estonian who made it to gold fleet.
Among girls Carolina Albano from Italy continued in her yesterday’s stride. She says stability is the key to her success. Carolina said that the winds were very changeable, like yesterday, and very strong in some moments. “Sailing was not easy today in these conditions but I managed to show stable results and now I have two first and two fourth results. Only stability helps to sail in the top of the fleet.”
Today’s first with a huge margin and third places brought Hannah Anderssohn from Germany to the second position overall. Now she has the same amount of points as yesterday’s second Louise Cervera from France (today 5-2). Aoife Hopkins from Ireland (6-4) is only two points behind them. Maris Seersant from Tallinn Yacht Club is 23rd (17-30).
From now on the boys will be racing in the gold and silver fleets. Girls will continue as one fleet.
