Inaugural Melges 24 Austrian Open Championship Declared A Resounding Success
For the first time ever the Melges24 class sailed an Austrian Open. The Class association set up earlier this year prepared the event as good as possible in Cooperation with "Sailing Club Kammersee" (www.sck.at) at Lake Attersee from 22-24 May.
21 Melges24 teams from 5 nations showed up at the starting line.
The weather situation made it difficult to sail on the northern part of Lake Attersee - the local thermical winds had no chance to built as usual due to some deep-pressure area southerly of the lake.
Anyway the race committee did a good job and was able to sail all 7 races which were planned with the Notice of Race.
The guests from abroad dominated the event. IMCA vice-chairman Riccardo Simoneschi took a break from his TP52 campaign and raced his Melges24 in great style. Winning 3 races, finishing 2 times in second place and adding one 5th place made him the winner of the event followed by CZE 739 helmed by Ladislav Smutny and GER 779 helmed by Philipp Ocker who started sailing Melges24 this year.
The best boat from Austria was Franz Urlesberger sailing AUT 681 finishing in 6th place.
The full results are for download from the SCK-website: http://www.sck.at/rk/upload/ergebnisse/1243184996_melges09.pdf
On Friday Night the Austrian Class held it's first AGM and got a great offer from Atomic/Amersports to administrate the class through Michael Schineis' office. Michael is since 2004 sailing the M24.
On Saturday Night SCK invited all teams for the Championship dinner and the price giving on Sunday afternoon was as relaxed as the whole event.
So everybody should have enjoyed this event and is ready to come back for another Melges24 event at SCK.
Günter Tzeschlock / 03.06.09