Day two at the Martini EFPT in Perna, Croatia started very easy with the skippers meeting at 1.00pm. With the usual easterly wind during the morning and early afternoon the hopes were high for it to shift to it’s usual westerly direction later in the day.
The official opening ceremony took place yesterday evening at the Camp Perna beach bar with food and drinks for the competitors and a nice presentation of all the entrants. After the tow-in show in the afternoon in front of a massive crowd, that mainly consisted of windsurfers, everyone wanted to learn more about the riders and get to know them personally. It has been really nice to see this high interest and involvement of the spectators at this event.
Tow-in spectators at the event-site
Around 4.00pm this afternoon and just after a tow-in session was launched, the wind direction eventually changed and started to deliver sailable conditions. The first heat could be started soon afterwards and was the indicator if the wind was sufficient enough to run a competition. Whilst Jazzy Zwerus (JP) from the Netherlands and Matthias Erlacher (Fanatic/Sailloft) had problems in the light conditions, Loick Spicher (JP/North) and Yentel Caers (JP/Neilpryde) mixed sliding moves with power maneuvres like culos, burners, shakas and konos and could fill up the judging sheets on both tacks.
Loick Spicher from Switzerland
The next heat saw a very strong sailing Hugo Sousa (RRD/RRD) from Brasil against EFPT rookie and IFCA youth competitor Lennart Neubauer (Starboard/Neilpryde) who won the junior division yesterday. On the other side Maxime Van Gent (Fanatic/North) could defeat Maxime Schmidt (F2/Neilpryde). In the light wind and by training mostly in Bonaire, Van Gent definitely had an advantage over the young Belgium sailor in todays light-wind conditions.
In heat number three Adam Sims (Sailloft/Patrik) from the UK sailed against Croatian rider Matko Jovanovic and Amado Vrieswijk (JP/Severne) against organiser and Croatian freestyler Marko Mudrovcic. Vrieswijk performed an incredible heat on his 5.4 and 100lt board showing culos both tacks, a shaka, burner and several stylish sliding moves and proved his world-class potential one more time.
Amado Vrieswijk from Bonaire
The next heat was an interesting one and a good battle between Kostya Smirnov (JP/Neilpryde) from Russia and Riccardo Marca (North/Fanatic) from Italy. Marca sailed a decent heat and showed his improvement since the last year. Smirnov didn’t give him an easy time, yet had to let the Italian freestyler pass to the next round.
The eight rider to complete the quarter final was Adrien Bosson (North/Fanatic) who is the current leader of the European Tour.
Just when the second round of the single elimination started, the wind decreased and made a fair competition impossible. Since the wind dropped off more and more we had to call it a day at 7.00pm. The forecast for tomorrow doesn’t look very promising but we are having our fingers crossed to finish at least the quater final.
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Hugo Sousa style