Dial your own language - European sailing news and more...

by Jedda Murphy and the Sail-World Team on 6 Apr 2013 Sail-World is the largest sailing news source in the world, each month we receive around 700,000 visits from sailors and for large numbers of these English is a second or third language if at all.

Over the last two years Sail-World has been developing 1000 sailing technical phrase and word translation tables. We have these in Spanish, Italian, French, Polish, German, Dutch and another dozen or so, with many more to follow including Arabic and the Scandinavian languages..

Today we bring you the first of our ´Dial your own language' Sail-World Europe and Africa newsletters.

We have now also upgraded our online news submit forms which allow sailors to send us news in their own language from Arabic to Russian and another 50+

Now for sailing news...

Excellent weather for the start of the Olympic class regatta season in Europe at the ISAF Sailing World Cup Palma, here in Mallorca. The weather has been kind. There has been some postponed starts but it is a beautiful day here this Friday in Palma.

The fleet is impressive in total numbers but it mustn’t be forgotten that back in 2009, before the global financial crisis had really deepened, the numbers were much greater at this regatta.

For this Sailing World Cup event, we have another experimental format. Antonio Gonzalez de la Madrid, the Sailing World Cup Manager, says ISAF is looking feedback. Feedback they are obviously going to get.

Sail-World has been hard pressed to find anybody who actually likes the format amongst the coaches and sailors.
With Australian supercoach Victor Kovelenko blasting it and Wil van Bladel , the Belgian Laser Radial coach dryly commenting that it was not exactly motivating for the top sailors.

What the new format has done is to effectively shorten up the regatta and increase the level of chance over the last few days.

A number of the top Laser Standard contenders commented today the effect has been not to reward consistency but to ensure that the final one day would be a very close event and the winning of the whole regatta would depend on who sailed well on the final day.

If that’s what the World cup organisers and ISAF see as the way forward…. After all, follow that route with a 35 boat Olympic fleet and you could wrap up the racing in just two days. perhaps it needs a little rethinking

We will leave you to read more on this and other events in your own time.