Big breeze for offshore race

First win for Silveren Swaen at the Swan European Regatta

After a delayed start due to very strong winds, the long distance race in the Swan European Regatta got underway just after 10:00. In southeasterly winds over 30 knots, Piet-hein Bakker's Swan 53 Silveren Swaen (NED) and Richard Balding's Philippides 2 recorded victories. For Silveren Swaen it was a maiden win in the regatta, beating Sir Peter Ogden's Spirit of Jethou by just over two minutes and 36 seconds on corrected time, with Richard Loftus' Desperado exactly 30 seconds further back.

Silveren Swaen's tactician Joost Vink described the issues that the team overcame to win the race: "We all had our fair share of challenges. Firstly we broke a spinnaker halyard and secondly my own limited physical skill sets played an important part. But around us we could see that everyone had their moments and at the last mark Desperado obviously ran into trouble so that obviously gave us an advantage. Up until then we had been trailing her."

Balding and his crew are no strangers to silverware this week, scoring their fourth victory in five races over the competition in Class B. The win consolidates their position at the top of the leaderboard, ahead of Alan Major's Swan 41 Moustique (GBR).

Tactician Guy Moneyspencer commented on their victory: "It was very tough, it was a very long day and to be honest the conditions were quite extreme although the wind wasn't quite as bad as we thought when we got up this morning. We took it very safely; we were aware it was pretty tough so we took it pretty gently and took our time."

Moneyspencer and the crew are concerned that their chances of overall victory might be affected by the lighter winds forecast for tomorrow: "We're one of the heavier boats in our class so we've been favoured by the winds so far. So it'll be interesting to see how we get on in the light airs particularly against some of the modern boats which are going to be going a bit quicker tomorrow."

Sir Peter Ogden and his crew on board Spirit of Jethou also had to overcome some challenges in the strong winds: "We had a good start and we were quick off the line - everything was good! There was more breeze than we would have liked - we registered 33.6 knots at one point. We broke our pedestal, the bound that runs the pedestal snapped so the main immediately dumped and we broached - it was total chaos. For the rest of the race we had to grind the mainsheet so there are a lot of very tired people on board."

Provisional results:

Class A
1.SPIRIT OF JETHOU, Swan 601, Sir Peter Ogden GBR 1/1/4/3/2 - 11 points
2. DESPERADO, Swan 65, Richard Loftus GBR 4/2/5/1/3 - 15 points
3. SILVEREN SWAEN, Swan 53, NED 3/9/8/5/1 - 26 points

Class B
1.PHILIPPIDES 2, Swan 41 R Balding, GBR 1/2/1/1/1/ - 6 points
2.SELENE, Swan 44 Mark Jephcott, GBR POINTS 3/3/4/2/3 - 15 points
3.CHRISTINA, Swan 40 Ben Mobley GBR 5/12/2/5/2 - 28 points