Virtual Sailing World Championship overall + Video

by SailX on 5 Jun 2015 Finally - after four Rounds, five weeks, 204 Official Regattas, 1,294 races, 32,356 hours and 138,672 boat starts - we have a winner of the first-ever Virtual Sailing World Championship: Bob Christensen from Canada!

Last Sunday evening, the Top-30 ranked virtual sailors assembled online for a final ‘winner-takes-all’ regatta.

This Grand Final was live-streamed with commentary by Andy Rice of SailJuice.com (well worth signing up if you are a racing sailor) and what a great showdown it was!

Racing was exceptional - with mistakes harshly punished, every single point hard-won and finally, only the tie-breaker separated first from second.

We saw this from the beginning, with the favourite, ‘flow’ (professional sailor and coach, Steve Hunt), struggling to find his form in the first three races before hitting his stride.

By this time it was too late however (even with two bullets) and the final race saw ‘Bobchr' (Bob Christensen from Canada) and ‘Yahooz' (Daniel Papert from the USA / Long Island Sound) fighting it out for the overall win.

And fight it out they did, providing a great spectacle with a bout of pre-start match-racing which nearly saw ‘Yahooz' pull off the impossible. But finally the cool head of ‘Bobchr' prevailed - doing just enough to hold his nerve and win on count-back.

In the post-regatta interview neither ‘flow' nor ‘Yahooz' (both long-time SailX racers) expressed surprise at Bob's victory, despite him only joining SailX eight months ago, and both heaped praise on his rapid rise through the ranks.

Bob returned the compliment thanking them for their help - but we suspect they won’t be so helpful going forward! And so the first Virtual Sailing World Championship concluded. Well done Bob! We leave the final word to him

On the Grand Final 'This was the single most exciting event I have experienced on SailX. Even though the stakes were high among so many of the best SailX racers, sportsmanship and camaraderie thrived throughout.”

On SailX: 'SailX has tremendously improved my ability to think in terms of strategy around the course and tactics in the presence of other boats. Possibly the more important thing to me, it has improved my ability to anticipate situations as each real life race progresses. With the sailing season now upon us here in Canada, I am looking forward to bringing the tremendous amount that I have learned over these past months to bear on my real life racing.'