Dmitry Samokhin Wins 1st Cascais Series.

Winners….RUS 76 helmed by Dmitry Samokhin, with Aleksey Bushuev & Andrey Kirilyuk..

With a flat calm day and no sign of wind yesterday, the Club Naval de Cascais had to cancel any hope of adding more races to their exciting 1st Winter Series event. No doubt some of the crews were relieved not to be sailing in such tough conditions as was served up over the weekend.

Overall winner Dmitry Samokhin told me “It’s great to sail here-Cascais has shown once again that it’s a ‘no nonsense’ venue 🙂 I guess at some moments, in the squalls, it was 35kts of wind”….  It was one of these squalls that unfortunately caught GER 1123 “Pow Wow” helmed by Michael Zankel, crewed by Phillip Blinn and Pedro Andrade, by surprise and they “Chinese Gybed”, this amazing photo below shows Pow Wow just before trouble hit!

With Spinnaker up, Pow Wow begins to roll to windward, during a wind squall in Cascais.

After the gybe, Pow Wow comes up full of water, as the spinnaker continues to pull sideways.

Phill pumps out & Michael battle’s to get the water out, whilst Pedro recovers the Spinnaker….

Back to the prizes and in 2nd place overall was Local Helm Alvaro Marinho.

POR 64 Alvaro Marinho, Diago Barros & Rodrigo Vantacich receive their runners up prize from President, Jose Matoso.

In 3rd place overall was HUN 57 helmed by Ferenc Kis-Szolgyemi..

HUN 57 Ferenc Kis-Szolgyemi with his team Karoly and Tamas take 3rd place overall.

The next Winter Series in Cascais is on the first week in December, which unfortunately clashes with the Coupe d’Hiver in Cannes. However, I’m sure both events will be very well attended to round off a wonderful year of Dragon Sailing…  Then we have 2015 to come…  and what a year that will be……….

All these amazing photo’s were taken by Top Professional Ricardo Pinto…  Visit his fantastic web site for more action shots taken at the very highest level.

Higher, Faster, Longer……………    Stavros…