Reporting from Bulgaria

The whether in Bulgaria January and February is very cold and there is no sailing activity here - reports Ivan Kirchev from Varna. Meantime we make some repairs and refreshing of our boats. We order some spare parts from Devoti and we plan to fit the boat until the end of March, and to start practicing as soon as possible. We sailed a few times with our boat in December 2007 (see picture above).

It will be the first season in Bulgaria, when the classification of keel boats in sailing regattas will be under IRC handicap. So we will be in direct competition with all other racing boats and I think it will be interesting.

Here in Bulgaria most of the racing keel boats are old fashion and the whole sailing community will keep an eye on us. Our performance with Melges 24 will be very important for the future of the class here, so the Bulgarian calendar will lead our team. The regattas in Bulgaria start in June and there will be 7 or 8 events. Two of them will be international with the participants from Ukraine, Russia and Romania. The season is closing at the end of September with the Bulgarian national sailing championship.

As absolute beginners with Melges 24 we have no time to prepare our selves to participate in big event such as Worlds in Sardinia this year, but we negotiate with the sponsors to help us for one or two of the class events maybe in Slovenia and Italy at the end of summer 2008 and we'll keep you informed about this.

In the meantime if you are interested to join us sailing the Melges 24 in Bulgaria please E-mail me at i_kirchev@belltt.com - Ivan Kirchev.