Oh, how we love the Athens Trophy sailing event! Two days full of racing action, excitement and fan. To some it could be exhausting, or slightly overbearing; to us it’s simply indulging in what we love and sincerely appreciate.
“…Despite getting a DNF (Did Not Finish) and 14 penalty points on the specific race, TEAM EXLence managed 2nd overall on the 6th Athens Trophy standings. You just can’t be too careful…”
That was last year’s Trophy. Time constrains, tough business schedules, even an accident during the race -thankfully nothing serious, hit TEAM EXLence and despite our hopeful ranking in the race, we were denied first position, instead finishing second.
It was hard. It didn’t go down well with the Team, we got really concerned, and we made a promise.
Like someone used to say: “Winning is an all the time thing”, “You don’t do things right once in a while … you do them right all the time.”
He was Vince Lombardi, the great football coach, who was also famous for saying, “You’ve got to love it”. He believed you would not be a winner on the football field if you didn’t love tackling and hitting hard.
We do love IT.
And we did deliver on our promise.
Here are the facts:
Second weekend in May 2016, Sat.14th & Sun.15th, anyone who is someone in the sail racing community has saved this date. The “7th Athens Trophy”, organized by the well-esteemed Hellenic Offshore Racing Club, is to become a reality.
Five windward-leeward races in two days, right across from the HORC headquarters in the Microlimano cove of the Saronic Gulf.
On both days temperature was 24-25°C, while wind on Saturday was southerly, 11-15 kn and on Sunday from the east, 7-10 kn. Fifteen teams had registered for participation, some of the very best, making clear from the beginning of the day that the standard was very high and that a tough competition lay ahead.
On Saturday afternoon at 13:20:00 the first race started for a course of 4.26nm; 00:40:11 later (corrected 00:32:37) we finished 1st. Good, for starters.
At 14:26:00; race #2, 7.18nm and 00:54:24 later, we came 3rd (Ouch! but still at the top).
And later at 16:00:00; race #3, 7.18nm, 01:11:11 elapsed time (00:58:16 corrected), 3rd again behind BULLET and OPTIMUM 3. The good news? We still have a shot at winning tomorrow.
Come Sunday afternoon we scored two 2nd places in both race #4 & #5.
Later in the day (at 17:46:27 to be exact) MELX II – P.L. FERRARI was officially declared the overall winner of the “7th Athens Trophy – 2016”.
Our promise to ourselves had been fulfilled.
RESULTS:
This Event
DAY #1
DAY #2