Bad Weather Forces Racing To Be Abandoned on Day Five in Neustadt
At 1530 the Race Committee of the Melges 24 Europeans at Baltic Race Week in Neustadt announced that it would not be possible to run any races on day five of the championship. Since early this morning the teams had been waiting and watching the weather but sadly the conditions were never stable enough to send the boats afloat.
Around 1500 the wind did start to increase a little and hopes were raised, but with the stronger wind came bad visibility and then rain plus the high likelyhood of thunderstorms which are already travelling towards Nuestadt. The severe threat of thunderstorms meant that there was no option but to abandon racing on safety grounds.
For tomorrow's final day of the championship the start time for the first signal has been brough forward to 1000 and the NRV's Race Committee hopes to run two final races for the championship. There is a 1600 final start time cut off but if the weather gods cooperate it should be comfortably possible to complete two more races.
Away from the race course we had one interesting overnight development which affects the overall top three placings. In race six Italy's Sandro Montefusco sailing Cesar Bressan's Airis was black flagged, pushing them down into third place behind leader Favio Favini, helming Blu Moon for Switzerland's Franco Rossini and second placed Lorezo Bressani sailing Uka Uka. Back ashore Montefusco put in a protest requesting the reversal of this decision and redress on the basis that the pin end boat was not anchored. The jury found in his favour and awarded him average points taking him back up into second place.
Fellow Italian Stefano Cherin, sailing Se Godemo, also applied for redress on the same basis and was similarly awarded average points moving him up from 26th overall to 21st.