Dmitry Samokhin Wins the Juan Carlos Trophy.

The BMW General Manager of Portugal awards Dmitry, Andrey and Aleksey their “special prize” after the Mayor of Cascais presented the wonderful Juan Carlos Trophy to the winning RUS 76 team. Dmitry helming his “Strange Little Girl” recorded an 8th place in the final race yesterday, to finish 5pts clear of the fleet after 8 boats, including UKR 7 and GER 1125 were sent home after a Black Flag recalled start in 15 kts of building North-Westerly wind.

The final race was eventually started around 1.30 as the PRO had to re-set the course several times. With six teams still able to lift the trophy, two hopes (as mentioned) were dashed after a general recall on a black flag saw 8 boats sent in for an early crane out…… However, it was GBR 758 Klaus Diederichs and GBR 767 Ton de Waardt who made the best starts from the committee boat and headed inshore to the right. When these two boats emerged from the right, only DEN 138 Lars Hendriksen managed to cross ahead with RUS 27 in hot pursuit. At the first down wind gate Hendriksen and de Waart took the right hand buoy, whilst Diederichs and Loginov took the left. The race was decided right there! right then! As the right hand side of the second beat was so favoured, GBR758 and RUS 27 made huge gains. Also benefiting from a hard right beat, was RUS 34 Vasily Senatorov, who was to finish 3rd behind Klaus and Anatoly, thus moving himself up to 2nd overall…. Well done Vasily helming “Even Better”, with his crew Igor Iwashintcov and Alex Muzychenko, pictured below.

Below, Klaus Diederichs is being presented with the “Stavros” Trophy for winning the last race, unfortunately his crew Andy Beadsworth and Jamie Lea were still sorting the boat.

The overall prize for the best Corinthian Team went to GBR 720 Graham Bailey. Finishing a very creditable 7th overall, Graham and his wife Julia, had help from Richard Powell and Francisca Martins. Below they also are presented with a special BMW prize.

The BMW prizes, were to have any BMW Car of their choice in any country for one month. So with 4 people in their team they best chose a “hatch-back” ..  Well done.

3rd overall went to GER 1125 Stephan Link, who despite a Black Flag on the final race, managed to keep his podium place by just one point ahead of the best POR boat Jose Matoso’. So Jose finished 4th and event leaders up until the last day, GBR 763 Lawrie Smith had to settle for 5th, after choosing the left-hand-side of the race course, which simply did not pay at all…  Still they live to fight another day and surely are one of the favourites to lift the European Title in two weeks time…

To those of you that read my blog’s I will just mention that after my “personal” views regarding the races and Black Flag issues, GBR 767 did receive TWO BFD’s and so in future my lip’s are sealed……..  🙂

Higher, Faster, Longer…………              Stavros.   GBR 767…

p.s. A big thank you once again for the superb Photo’s from Ricardo Pinto.  rspinto.com