Star Class Honoring the Past, Leading the Future
Report by Jacques Puissթgur
The 23rd Primo Cup, organized by the Yacht Club of Monaco,
was sailed for on February 1-4, 2007. Five classes (Surprise,
J24, Laser SB3, Dragon, and Star) participated in the first
weekend of racing. 15 Stars of 5 nations raced 8 races. The
athletic Ukrainian Olympic team, Vasil Gureyev / Volodimir
Korotkov won easily by a fantastic score of 8 points.
On the first day only one race was held in a force 2 wind, won by the French team Bթrenguier father and son, followed by other French Jacques Puissթgur / Jean Nicolas Bondaletoff (more than a total 132 years old team), third the Monaco team Marco Marchesi / Eric Barrabino. A second race was cancelled by the committee because the wind became too light.
The second day a good westerly force 3/4 permitted 5 races! The Brits Graham Bailey / George Skuodas won the first and the forth day races, but Gureyev was consistent this day with 2, 1, 2, 1, 1. Rթgis Bթrenguier after 6 races (the worst discarded) was second, 4 points behind Gureyev. Graham Bailey was third, 2 points behind Bթrenguier.
This temporary classification was indeed the same at the end. The third day a strong 20 knots easterly blew with huge waves. Marchesi won race 7. The Ukrainians were second and then went on to finish first in the final race! The Bթrenguiers were very consistent in these windy races (3, 2) beating Graham Bailey definitively (4, 4) by a 3 points margin. Too tired for racing in this breeze after 5 races the day before, I decided to come back to Nice on a run in an amazing wild ride of 55 minutes to cover the 11 nautical miles! Some other Nice stars did the same. Congratulations to Julia Bailey (GBR) who was third at the last race with her excellent giant Caspar Pfarsberg crew, getting them 7th in the final results!
