Star Class Honoring the Past, Leading the Future
The 2024 Star Eastern Hemisphere Championship has crowed its winners, Marin Misura and Tonko Barac are back in Croatia with another Silver Star, after claiming their first one last year at the 2023 Eastern European Championship in Warnemunde, Germany.
“We were here, in the North of Europe from the warm coast of Croatia also last year, and after winning we promised we would never come back into this cold and tough weather, but as you can see, we couldn’t restist, and we are glad we did, as it was a very nice Championship”, commented Tonko Barac at the prize giving ceremony at the Eckernförde Yacht Club.
Four days of racing planned ended up in just two sailing days, the first one with two races in and the last one, yesterday, with three races completed. Misura / Barac have undoubtedly the best scores: two bullets, a second and a fourth allowed them to skip the final race today. Second overall, and first U30 team, Daniel Fritz and Michael Oberwegger from Germany, after a bad start (23) they recovered with a 5th as worst result. Bronze medal goes to the reigning Star World Champion, Max Kohlhoff sailing with Steyn van Driessel. Former Class President closes the three best Germans in fourth overall sailing with usual crew Kilian Weise, they close the series with two wins. A well deserved fifth place for the European Vice President for Europe Tom Lofsted (SWE) with Brazilian crew Samuel Gonçalves.
The conditions have been Northern-Europe-tough, with stormy strong winds blowing on the racecourse, so hard that two days got canceled, but the sailors were happy nonetheless thanks to the warm hospitality of the Yacht Club and organizers.
