Sunny skies, flat seas, and 8-13 knots of wind made for perfect conditions at the start of inshore windward/leeward racing on the third day of the 2023 ORC European Championship, hosted by Royal Malta Yacht Club and Yachting Malta.
Two races were held for all classes, with the 10 teams in Class A and 9 teams in Class C racing on a one-course area to the north of Valetta harbour, while the 18 teams in Class B competed on a one-course area set to the south.
After a brief postponement to allow the breeze to stabilize for the first race, Class A got started a little too fast: enough teams charged the start line to have the race committee call everyone back on a General Recall signal. Once away in the second attempt this first race of the day – three laps of the windward/leeward track – Class A results were close in corrected time despite a range of rated speed of over 16 minutes: Karl Kwok’s (HKG) TP 52 BEAU GESTE won the race by only 40 seconds after over Claudio Terrieri’s (ITA) Swan 45 BLUE SKY after an hour of racing, and by one second less in the second race. These two are 1-2 respectively in the Class A standings after three races.
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