Hippocampus Nº46

REGATTAS
EUROPEAN TITLE FOR CLUBE
NAVAL DE CASCAIS
Vasco Serpa, Diogo Machado Pinto, Paulo Manso and Hugo Rocha: these are the
names of the new J70 European Champions, a title won by the Portuguese crew
in Great Britain, in a class that promises to be one of the liveliest of the coming
years at Clube Naval de Cascais
In the first days of September, the British
Weymouth & Portland National Sailing
Academy organised this year’s J70 European
Championship. Clear skies, sunny weather,
mild temperatures and wind varying between
8-10 knots. These were the weather
conditions that greeted the sailors who,
aboard the 48 vessels in the class entered for
the event, competed for the title, representing
fifteen nations: Australia, France, Germany,
Great Britain, Ireland, Mexico, Monaco,
the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain,
Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey and the USA.
Starting from the end, the North American
team, led by Doug Rastello, aboard Good To
Go, won the championship with undeniable
merit. However, due to their geographical
origin, the title could not be awarded to
anyone other than those who occupied the
next place in the final standings, by the way,
the first Europeans enrolled, the Portuguese
crew made up of Vasco Serpa, Diogo Machado
Pinto, Paulo Manso and Hugo Rocha,
from Solyd Sailing Team/SailCascais. And
that’s not the least of the plaudits for this
achievement, had the championship not
included almost half a hundred competitors,
and they are therefore very worthy new J70
European Champions.
Even so, in purely competitive terms, the
end of the J70 European Championship
was neither what was expected nor what the
organisation would have liked. But there are
factors that nobody can control, and the
truth is that on the final day of the event, and
for the second day running, the wind hardly
blew in Portland harbour or Weymouth
Bay, leaving the Race Committee no choice
but to call an end to the “hostilities” in the
middle of the day, because if the temperature
was more than inviting, topping 30° C, the
slight sea breeze that was felt was no more
than that on the south coast of England.
Given all this, it was understandable that
the no more than five regattas that had been
sailed so far had fallen far short of what
the organisation had originally planned.
However, this did not jeopardise the merit
of the winners, either the Americans, the
outright winners, or the Portuguese, crowned
European Champions. The first, having
discarded their 11th place in the first race,
excelled in consistency, topping the table
with 18 points, 11 less than the Portuguese,
who finished three points ahead of their
two closest pursuers, on equal points - the
Turkish Denizcik, crewed by Gulboy Gyrel,
Ali Tezdiker, Massimo Bortoletto and Victor
Diaz Leon, and the British Brutus II, with
Charlie Thompson, Josie Gliddon, Chris
Grube, Ben Saxton and Elisabeth Whitener
on board.
In fact, the challenging conditions that
everyone had to face are well illustrated by
the fact that no more than a dozen points
separated the second from the twelfth-place
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