GBR 720 “Aimee” helmed by Julia Bailey wins the opening race of the Edinburgh Cup..
Mixed conditions of zero wind then “full on” 27+kts of wind tested the 20 boat fleet in Largs, Scotland yesterday at the 2015 Edinburgh Cup. It was a day of sailing that all the crews will remember for a variety of reasons as they crawl out of their beds this morning aching from head to toe, bruised, battered but very happy to be been part of this exciting competition.
The first race was won by Julia Bailey helming “Aimee” with her 4 person team of Pedro Andrade, Will Heritage and Keith Tipple. This top team did an excellent job of keeping good speed and making no mistakes in these difficult conditions. 2nd was GBR 795 helmed by Tom Vernon who is fresh back from his race win in La Rochelle. 3rd was GBR 761 helmed by Gavia Wilkinson-Cox who also did a good job to keep the boat below the mast 🙂 and finish well in these extremely testing conditions.
The seconded race of the day was started in completely different conditions, with the left side of the course favoured (or so we all thought), many boats battled to win the pin. This caused a little bit of chaos as some boats had to round the pin boat and re start, which meant dipping the whole fleet. Fortunately this actually turned out to be not a bad thing, as GBR 793 and GBR 761 were soon to make a substantial gain out to the right. However, it was our good friend Bocci Aoyama from Enoshima, Japan helming his beautiful Petticrows “Jevis II” who stole the show ! Seeing the huge gains the first boats on the right had made, tactician Kasper Harsberg took Bocci all the way out to the right and had a lead of 400m by the top mark… 🙂
Winners of race two, 2015 Edinburgh Cup, Kasper Harsberg, Bocci Aoyama & Igen Notion.
As the wind continued to drop the last beat saw GBR 761 “Jerboa” just slip past GBR 793 “Harry”, helmed by Mike Budd from Abersoch, to take 2nd place right behind JAP 50, with Mike having to settle for a solid 3rd.
This was the first competitive race Bocci has won outside of Japan in his 30 years of Dragon Sailing, a fantastic achievement and very well deserved. It is races like this and seeing the smiling faces on this happy team that brings home the reason we all love sailing the Dragon. The boats are so evenly matched but it takes time to learn the skills and techniques to achieve success. However, if Bocci lives to be 100 years old I bet he will never forget the day he won the 2nd race of the 2015 Edinburgh Cup ! … Congratulations again to his excellent team.
So overall its Ladies First as Julia and Gavia are equal on 5pts and Bocci is 3rd with 8pts. With 4 more races to go there is still lots of sailing to do, so lets see what Scotland can offer us today ……..
Higher, Faster, Longer………… Stavros. (Bear GBR 789).