“ELIAS KARONIS MEMORIAL RACE 2013”- AGAIN ON THE PEDESTAL!
The “Elias Karonis Memorial Race” organized by N.O.N.K.E., the 2nd race of the year, took start at 11:00’ am on Saturday April the 13th for the classic Faliro – Fleva, port side turn around – Faliro course, total distance 24nm.
At the start of the race the wind was blowing from 160-170 degrees at about 6 knots. It was obvious that the first leg to Fleva would be dead upwind with quite a number of tacks. By the time we were approaching the shores of Alimos and Agios Kosmas the wind looked as it gradually weakened, and that was exactly the reason why we opted for the windward side of the starting line.
We were proven right on that decision, as not only the wind was stronger away from the shore, but pretty soon it changed to our starboard. Consequently not only we made it to Fleva without tacks but with the Genoa eased on the barber hauler, occasionally up to Jib Top, when the wind came at a true angle wider than 75 degrees.
The significant change in the wind direction helped the faster boats which had started to our leeward side -ERYTOS and VANA VIOLETA 3 – to take the lead and sail past the Fleva rounding mark on the head of the race with MELX II following 3rd. It was clear that our only chance was to win on corrected time and we started the return leg on a close reach in 10 knots, with lots of jibes before finishing on a dead run.
At the end of the race ERYTOS crossed the finish line making up significant time on the rest of the boats and after time correction, Capt. Costas Manthos and his team won the 1st place in the ORCi class.
We took the lead on corrected time over VANA VIOLETTA 3 which finished ahead of us, but it was AEOLUS II that beat us by 3’14” into the 2nd place after time correction, although they finished 17 minutes behind us.
Coming in 3rd place put us on the pedestal for second time in two races, quite satisfactorily, although we do know that we can do much better than that.
Next race will be VARKIZA, on Saturday, April 20.
Stay tuned!
RESULTS:
This Race