2006 Snipe European Championship, Pori, Finland

Final - Aug 5, 2006

Spaniards take top five in Snipe Europeans

The final day started out with a flat calm. The postponement pennant was hoisted ashore. Slowly, the sea breeze came creeping in from the north, and some boats put out to sea, clearly burned by being late to the start on earlier days. The race committee boat stayed ashore, listening to reports from the wind-sniffing mark boat. Eventually, at 13 hrs, the committee snuck out and anchored rather close to shore. Boats on the horizon got a move on in the light breeze to get back to the starting area in time.

At 13:35 the starting gun went off, on a line favoring the committee boat end. Local champion Claus Carpelan finally got over his line shyness and put his nose, or rather the boat’s nose, right in the front row. It was to propel him to a fifteenth place, his best for the week. Anyway, when the rumble in the jungle on the starting line cleared, the sight was a familiar one: ESP, ESP, ESP… The Ferrers came first to the windward mark, with Pablo Fresneda and Alfredo Gonzales snapping at their heels. Longhi could have been in that group, but overstood the mark in his starboard approach.

On the run, the fleet was split in two directions, reaching high to keep up the pressure, to reach the leeward gate quickly. On the second beat, Fresneda read the motion of the ocean best, pulled away from the Ferrer Movistars, put an open cover on them, and that was that – the fate of the European Championship was sealed. On the third beat, the fresh Nordic champion Jordi Triay also managed to pass the Ferrers to take third. In sixth came the young French team, a very good showing from Justin och Jean-Jacques Frenbault.

As the field kept slowly creeping in, the clock kept ticking towards the 15:00 deadline after which no start could be made. The mutinous sailors decided en masse to vote with their tillers by heading directly into port. The PRO Ari Ahonen on the starting vessel Joella must have felt like Captain Bligh on the Bounty, watching his crew sail away into the sunset. After holding out for the final quarter of an hour, he hauled up his anchor and also headed for the shore.

Thus, nine races were completed, reaching the magic limit for allowing two discards – a relief for Tiago Roquette and others with two catastrophic results. When Henry Nordenswan had crunched the numbers for the 55 boats, the leaderboard read like a Spanish-Belgian spaghetti western. Five Spaniards in front, chased by two top guns from ‘the gang of Antwerp’. The final results can be seen in summary below. The full results have by now been posted on the regatta website www.snipe.fi.

Thank you for following our newscast, it has been a wonderful week. The Snipe Nordic and European Championships in Pori, Finland are now concluded. We look forward to meeting you all in future regattas.

Results summary.

Race 9: 1) Pablo Fresneda - Cesar Travado, Almeria, Spain. 2) Alfredo Gonzàlez - Cristian Sanchez, Las Palmas, Spain. 3) Francisco Sanchez Ferrer - Marina Sanchez Ferrer, Alicante, Spain. 4) Jordi Triay - Jose Escudero, Menorca, Spain. 5) Alejandro Fresneda – Borja Llopis, Almeria, Spain. 6) Justin Frebault - Jean Jacques Frebault, Mios, France.

Total results after 9 races, with 2 discards:

1) Pablo Fresneda - Cesar Travado, 18 p. 2) Francisco Sanchez Ferrer - Marina Sanchez Ferrer, 27.75 p./ /3) Jordi Triay - Jose Escudero, Menorca, Spain, 38.75 p. 4) Alfredo Gonzàlez - Cristian Sanchez, 39.5 p/. /5) Rayco Tabares Àlvarez - Gonzalo Morales Quintal, Las Palmas, Spain, 57 p./ /6) Thierry Den Hartigh - Greet Jansen, Antwerp, Belgium, 60 p/. /7) Emmanuel Hens - Thomas Van Schaftinghen, Leest, Belgium, 67 p./ /8) Eduard Skornykov - Pavel Karachev, Moscow, Russia, 73 p. 9) Giampiero Poggi – Silvia Boccato, Rome, Italy, 89 p./ /10) Pietro Fantoni - Jacopo Ferrari-Bravo, Maruzzo, Italy, 78.75 p. 55 participants from 11 countries.

Full Results (29k pdf)

After 8 races

The conditions off Pori were apparently to the Italian taste on the third day of racing. On the menu were a fresh breeze from the northeast, puffy 20-degree shifts of planning and non-planing varieties, and sparkling water sin olas grandes, without large waves. In the second race of the day, Pietro Fantoni and crew Jacopo Ferrari-Bravo were probably lustily singing O Sole Mio as they pulled away to a solid lead. - Well, it was actually quite difficult to keep our lead, said a happy Pietro, who hails from the bay of Trieste. - You had to keep one eye on the wind and the other on your competitors. His countryman Roger Olivieri from Lago di Garda kept the second slot for a lap or more, but finally had to be content with a fourth place. In the first race of the day, fellow Triestino Stefano Longhi, our European Secretary, nabbed a good third place. Giampiero Poggi returned to his earlier form and grabbed a useful eighth place. The geographical Italian boot got a well-deserved polishing up today, with Poggi and Fantoni climbing to tenth and eleventh in the total standings.

At the top of the standings, things resemble a Spanish corrida, with no less than five Spanish matadors and their picador assistants at the front. The top honors have been shared rather evenly between the mainland contenders Fresneda & Travado from Almeria and the Ferrers from Alicante, with Fresneda only half a point ahead. They are chased by a pack of islanders, Triay from the Baleares in third followed by A.Gonzales and Rayco Tabares from the Canarias. The strong Belgian team of Hans, Hartig and Bomans, raised and trained on excellent Belgian beer, occupies the following three standings.

On the Scandinavian front, the Edwall brothers from Askim on the west coast of Sweden led the first race and finished in a very satisfactory fourth place, while the eighth place was taken by the Danes Skjoldvang – Löwenborg from Espergärde on the strait of Elsinore. The old Snipe fox Bigga Jansen took a tenth place in the second race, but otherwise ‘syns det meg at det norske flagg ikke vajet serlig sterkt’, i.e. that the Norwegian flag did not wave quite as strongly as on some previous days in this regatta.
Henry Ericsson

Preliminary results, a*fter the three races sailed on the third day. A total of 8 races have been completed, of the 11 planned.

Race 6:* 1) Alfredo Gonzàlez - Cristian Sanchez, Las Palmas, Spain/. /2)/ /Andrey Astashev - Andrey Samoilov, Russia. 3) Stefano Longhi - Paolo Lambertenghi, Trieste, Italy. 4) Per Edwall - Axel Edwall, Askim, Sweden. 5) Ben van Cauwenbergh - Nadia Deferm, Wiesbaden, Belgium. 6) Thierry Den Hartigh - Greet Jansen, Antwerp, Belgium.

Race 7: *1)* *Pietro Fantoni - Jacopo Ferrari-Bravo, Maruzzo, Italy. 2) Francisco Sanchez Ferrer - Marina Sanchez Ferrer, Alicante, Spain. 3) Emmanuel Hens - Thomas Van Schaftinghen, Leest, Belgium. 4)/ /Rayco Tabares Àlvarez - Gonzalo Morales Quintal, Las Palmas, Spain. 5) Victor Perez – Rafael Benitez, Madrid, Spain. 6) Roger Olivieri - Silvia Pederiva, Garda, Italy

Race 8: *1) Pablo Fresneda - Cesar Travado, Spain. 2) Bart Bomans – Jill Ponet, Belgium. 3) Eduard Skornykov - Pavel Karachev, Moscow, Russia. 4) Giovanni Galeotti – Floris Mortelmans, Antwerp, Belgium. 5) Francisco Sanchez Ferrer - Marina Sanchez Ferrer. 6) Giampiero Poggi – Silvia Boccato, Roma, Italy.

*Preliminary total standings after 8 races,* with 1 discard:

1) Pablo Fresneda - Cesar Travado, 27.25 p. 2) Francisco Sanchez Ferrer - Marina Sanchez Ferrer, 27.75 p. 3) Jordi Triay - Jose Escudero, Menorca, Spain, 48.75 p. 4) Alfredo Gonzàlez - Cristian Sanchez, 57.5 p. 5) Rayco Tabares Àlvarez - Gonzalo Morales Quintal, 67 p. 6) Emmanuel Hens - Thomas Van Schaftinghen, 69 p. 7) Thierry Den Hartigh - Greet Jansen, Antwerp, Belgium, 70 p. 8) Bart Bomans – Jill Ponet, 74 p. 9) Eduard Skornykov - Pavel Karachev, 74 p. 10) Giampiero Poggi – Silvia Boccato, 89 p.

View the full results. (25k pdf)

Visit the regatta site at http://www.snipe.fi/euro2006/