Vassiliki Watersports Festival

Greek sailors take major honours

In an quality field of Olympic athletes and International Champions the winners of the dominant classes in the Vassiliki Watersports Festival, Laser and Open Catamaran were the local teams.

Jordanis Pashalides and Kostas Trigonis, current Tornado European Champions, but sailing here an F18 Hobie Tiger, put in an impressive 6 firsts out of 7 races, leaving last year’s winners Joe Bennett and Marko Reynolds (also Tiger) in 2nd and Tom Nottingham and Remco Fisher a Dutch/Cypriot team on an F20 Hobie Fox in 3rd.

Jordanis and Kostas, with their 1000 euro winning cheque, are now headed over to Weymouth to defend their 2007 & 2008 Titles at the forthcoming Tornado class Europeans, while Joe and Marko and determined to improve ther result at the forthcoming Hobie Tiger Europeans in Lake Como, Italy.

Adonis Bouyouris, former Greek National Champion and Radial World Champion topped the leader board for the Laser class 2 points ahead of his compatriot Alexis Katsios and a further 2 points ahead of Alastair Nichol from the UK in 3rd. This class was not incident free with a number of the Greek team not being inclined to read the sailing instructions and being disqualified in the first race for going through the start/finish line and, furthermore 5 of the top sailors (including UK teams) being caught OCS in the last race of the first day. Nonetheless in the 3 races held in shifting wind conditions on the second day the Greek champions’ ability shone through and they came away with the prize money.

Virginia Kravarioti, Bronze medallist in the Yngling class at the Bejing/Quindao Olympics took the prize money in the Laser Radial class, edging UK representative Eve Brinsley into 2nd and her Yngling team mate Sofia Papadopoulou into 3rd.

David Barker and David Mather took the honours in the Open Dinghy fleet on a Laser 2000 and Stratos Kosmoglou and Pavlos Dimitriadis in the Hobie 16 fleet.

Tony Dudley and his crew on the J24 ‘Jungle’ narrowly squeezed out Neil McRoberts on his Dehler Optima 101 ‘Leona’ into 2nd with Bob Bennett of Felixstowe also on a Dehler 101 (Das Boot) into 3rd in the one day Yacht race around the small island of Arkoudi off the Lefkas coast.

The prize giving for the sailing competition was a relatively staid night after the excesses of the Miss Bikini competition and excellent UK band Wizard Sleeve on the Saturday night with local dignitaries presenting the prizes along with Sofia Bekatorou, 470 Gold medallist in Athens 2004 and her husband, 470 World Champion and participant at 5 Olympic regattas, Andreas Kosmatopolou.

The windsurfing side of the event was hampered by lighter winds than are normal in Vassiliki at this time of year and sadly only a light wind Freestyle event was managed successfully, even though the Race Officers had courses set up in almost every wind direction ready should a consistent breeze come through. In 1st place was Max Rowe (UK) in his first ever competition win, with Andy (Bubble) Chambers in 2nd and Chris Hartley, Club Vassiliki’s beach manager in 3rd.

As well as the Miss Bikini competition, attended by 2,000 people on the Saturday night, the event included a Greek cultural night of folklore dancing, a Harp concert, a mountain bike race and a BMX competition as well. In an attempt to make BMX riding fit more properly into a Watersports Festival the final round included the riders doing their tricks from a huge ramp before splashing into the harbour!

At the Opening Ceremony 6 Greek Olympic sailors presented the local school with a gift of 2 RS Tera’s from the organisers and the major sponsor of the event, Wildwind Holidays. The village is already anticipating its kids representing Greece at the future Olympic regattas.

The Vassiliki Watersports Festival is now the biggest Watersports Festivals in all Greece and is one of the few competitions in the world where amateurs can take on professionals for prize money.

Festival Organiser Simon Morgan said ‘Although we are a little dissapointed that the wind didn’t fill in enough for a decent windsurfing event, the 7 race series for the sailors was superb, the evenings’ social programme an absolute success and the feedback from everyone is that they will be returning next year with all of their friends. We are looking forward immensely to seeing the Festival on Sky Sport ‘Watersports World’ progamme in the near future.

More information on the event website.