Hobie 16 European Qualifiers - 70 boats racing

by David Brookes on 25 Jul 2017 The day after the grand award ceremonies for the Hobie 14 and Dragoon World Championships and Hobie 16 Master, Grand Masters, Youth spi, and spi European Championships . What a party it was. For sure we inspired the Formula 1 on how to celebrate with the amount of champagne sprayed from the podium winners!

On Monday the wind and surf had calmed down. Light air, again from Westerly directions. A rainbow formed over the Holland Hobie House, a beautiful welcome to the early bird sailors arriving at the beach. At the scheduled starting time for the first race the wind shifted to onshore and picked up nicely to around eight - ten knots, making sailing possible. The dark thunder clouds blew past and did not come back.

Day 5 and halfway through the Hobie 2017 Multiworlds and Europeans, four races were sailed for the Hobie 16 Open qualifiers. This is for the sailors that did not qualify for the Hobie 16 Open Gold Fleet. Today and tomorrow the sailors will battle in a fierce competition on the course for the prestigious Hobie 16 Gold Fleet, and which will race in the -almost as good- Silver Fleet, starting on Wednesday.

The fleet was spit in two and raced and scored separately.

In the yellow fleet former Hobie 14 World Champion Thorin, Zeilmaker had an impressive day with three first places and a fourth. When asked about the fourth Thorin replied, ‘I had the lead but thought it was only two laps. So I started head for the finish line when I say the fleet heading back upwind. So I stopped and headed back upwind but I had already lost eight places’.

Day one of the qualification brought the following results:

Blue Fleet:

1. Thorin Zeilmaker/ Felicitas Franke NED
2. Torsten Hengstmann/ Imke Hengstmann GER
3. Edward Erasmus/Stephanie Goodyear RSA

Yellow Fleet

1. Auxence Thomas / Cyriaque Thomas FRA
2. Kerstin Wichardt/ Sarah Schutte GER
3. Onno Schuitema/ Linda Boer NED

Tomorrow the forecast is tailor made for spectacular Hobie 16 sailing: 20 knots from the North / Northwest, with winds going up to 25 knots in the late afternoon.

For more information visit wesite.