Quote from Julio Alberto LABANDEIRA (Argentina) – Star class competitor:
“It is an honour to be the oldest competitor in the Sport Event. I have been sailing for about 40 years and as far as the venue is concerned it is huge and, generally speaking, very good. Every country has brought many Managers, team leaders and coaches, craft and the like. It’s as if these were the Olympic Games. The course is different every day. On the first day there was a lot of wind from the south and big waves. The day before yesterday the wind was completely different as it was coming from a northern direction and there were no waves. This is great because you have the opportunity to sail in different weather conditions.”.

Conditions for the first day: The robust meltemi wind experienced earlier in the week was replaced by a weaker cousin: it was a tricky day - hot with puffy, shifty offshore breeze fluctuating between 8 and 15 knots with 40 degree plus windshifts and pressure differentials across the courses.

On the 2nd day, light, fickle and shifty breezes dominated.

Percy/Mitchell (GBR) received a yellow flag penalty under the illegal propulsion rule. Then they were forced to retire from race 5 and miss the race 6 due to breaking their mast on the last leg of the morning’s race. They had been OCS and were trying to catch up. They worked their way back up into the top ten and then due to an “operator error” broke the top section of the rig.

Percy explained, “we were sailing the last downwind leg into the finish and we were working the boat to try and make up those extra places, unfortunately we were a bit too heavy handed and managed to snap the top section of the mast as we tried to work the boat.

Conditions on the 4th day were a relative calm with two races finished late in the afternoon, run after a great deal of difficulty.

On the 5th day, with hardly any wind blowing, there were flashes of lightning and bolts of thunder tearing the sky. But the summer downpour passed further to the North, and the muggy heat and calm at Agios Kosmas kept most fleets from racing, with the Stars able to finish only one race.