SSL Finals

Nassau

Very light winds made for a tough day. We didn’t get much right and ended up dropping from 5th to 9th in the quarter finals. In the final race, Percy/Ekstrom won by an inch in over Rohart/Ponsot. Melleby/Revkin 3rd and the qualification leaders, Mateusz/Bruno, who were seeded straight to the finals, finished 4th.  While light winds prevailed all day, the final could not have been more exciting.

Beautiful week-tough day.

Star Sailors League

St. Francis Yacht Club – Racing

Drawing its inspiration from tennis and its annual Masters, the SSL Board has launched in 2013 the SSL Finals which will be organised at the end of every year. This regatta has exceptional media coverage and brings together the 10 best sailors of the Ranking and about 15 VIP guest sailors.

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SSL Finals-Day 4

Nassau

Day 4 of the 2019 SSL Finals saw the qualifying series come to a close. Due to light winds, 2 races were run today making it a 10 race qualifying series.

Phil and I ran the gauntlet and made it! There was nothing easy about it. Today saw very light and still shifty winds. Phil and I retuned our mast last night and felt very fast today.

Drawing its inspiration from tennis and its annual Masters, the SSL Board has launched in 2013 the SSL Finals which will be organised at the end of every year. This regatta has exceptional media coverage and brings together the 10 best sailors of the Ranking and about 15 VIP guest sailors.

 

Two young teams did well today, Lorenzo Chiavarini(GBR)/Kilian Kilian Weise(GER) and Jimeen Ha(KOR)/Mark Strube. It’s great to see these two young Laser sailors mixing it up with seasoned keel boat sailors and doing well!

The forecast for tomorrow is more of the same light winds. The quarter final starts at 11:00 EST with 8 teams, qualifiers 3-10, racing. The top 5 from the quarter final move on to the semi final along with the #2 from the qualification series. The top 3 will move onto the Final along with the number #1 qualifier. The winner of the Final is the SSL Finals winner and takes a Gold Medal and a $40,000 prize. There is $200,000 total prize money on the line at this event.

Watch the live broadcast of the Quarter Finals, Semi Finals, and Finals tomorrow on StarSailors.com
You can also watch it on my FB site.
@starsailorsleague St. Francis Yacht Club – Racing #SSLFinals #SSLFinals2019 #StarSailorsLeague #watchthefinals #watchthelive #Bow01 #USA
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Photos by Star Sailors League / Gilles Morelle @gilles.morelle.photography and Marc Rouiller @lightstormphotographieay 4 brought to a close the qualifying round of the 2019 SSL Finals. The leaderboard photo has all the results.

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SSL Finals

Nassau, Bahamas’s

The 7th edition of Star Sailors League (SSL) started here in Nassau on Tuesday.  Here are my posts from my Facebook site, cayardsailing, for the first three days of racing.

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For day 1 of the SSL finals, the fleet ran in two races in a shifty Northwest breeze. Phil and I did fine, not great. We are tied for 5th on 14 points with Hamish Pepper/Pedro Trouche and Iain Percy/Anders Ekström. Melleby (6points) followed by Negri (7) at the top. The points are all pretty tight as you would imagine with a fleet like this.

Four races are on the schedule for tomorrow in 16-18knots. We will be tired tomorrow night!

Big breeze here in Nassau today yielded good results for Phil and I. Our 4, 14, 1 moved us up to 3rd place at the half way point of the qualifying series. Diego Negri (ITA) and Frithjof Kleen(GER)are really sailing consistently well and have a strong lead with just 8 points. Mateusz Kusznierewicz(POL) and Bruno Prada(BRA), 2019 World Champions, have 17, two points ahead of us.

Day 3 of the SSL finals was rough for Phil and I. We really never seemed to get on the correct side of the shifts. There were plenty and they were big.

Yesterday’s leader Diego Negri also had a tough day and slipped to third. Some of you younger sailors enjoyed the lighter winds and did well today.

This all means things are tightened up for Phil and I tomorrow. We are 4 points out of 5th and 8 points ahead of the critical 10th spot.

The forecast for tomorrow is more light wind.

The photo of us with our heads in the boat and behind several of our competitors is a good reflection of our day.

Watch the live broadcast tomorrow – Saturday on StarSailors.com
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@starsailorsleague #SSLFinals #SSLFinals2019 #StarSailorsLeague #watchthefinals #watchthelive #Bow01 #USA
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Photos by Star Sailors League / Gilles Morelle @gilles.morelle.photography and Marc Rouiller @lightstormphotographie

Here is a link to the results: http://bit.ly/2019SSLFinalsResults

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