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Bloggers in the fight for the Cup

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As you know, grinding with one's tongue is not the same thing as dragging weights (e.g. sacks). The latter case is by no means more difficult than the former, especially if no one is pulling at one's tongue. But a year and a half ago it so happened that here have pulled, and - at once at each other.

What is it about? About the fact that the long and tiresome bickering of some yachtsmen «who is cooler» in the yachting community of LiveJournal suddenly (about a year and a half ago) turned into something else. One user (widely known in the world Grigory Aksenov aka bidok) has caught the Internet community «on the weak» - like, enough in a cozy LiveJournal blabbering on the tongue, let's see in practice who of us is worth?

Things moved quickly - after just two months in Montenegro we had our first Yachting_rus Cup held in a match-race format on the First 36.7 yachts of the same type.

And so it was word by word until the fourth Yachting Cup which began on Monday in Montenegro. In the first races, the Champagne from the cherished «Cup» was savoured by the crew of Fedor Druzhinin from St. Petersburg, while in the second and third races «the Cup» was won by the team led by Dmitry Zaritsky from Kaliningrad. Until Saturday Dmitry aka Dzar had the title of «defender» or «defender» of the Cup. However, circumstances prevented him from coming this time, and since the opening of the new series of races, the defenseless Cup has been waiting for its fate.
For the possession of «der Chash'ka» (as the sailors themselves nicknamed the Cup) this time there are four teams. According to a draw, the racing numbers are as follows: crew number 1 - Peter Lezhnin (St. Petersburg - Hamburg), crew number 2 - Maxim Svetlichny (Bar), crew number 3 - Grigory Aksenov (Moscow), crew number 4 - Stanislav Shestopalov. Two yachts First 36.7 were provided by Expert Marine and sailing school Taktik.
The first round of races was held on Monday according to the system «each to each».


In the evening, after dinner «participants of» Cup gathered for a seminar on the Rules of sailing races for match races, which was chaired by the chief judge of the competition, Russian umpire Veniamin Gusev.

The main message from the race judge was the principle of common sense, formulated by him as «nowhere in the Rules there is any such indication to be idiots», accepted by all participants «with enthusiasm».

Artem Brum, director of sailing school Taktik (judge at the start): «While the crews are trying to get used to each other, there is a lot of inconsistency in the work of helmsmen and bowmen. As for the tactics of the skippers, Peter is waging a nice fight before the start, attacking furiously, and at the start looks like a fire-breathing dragon, while Maxim's crew chose the "me on the tractor" tactics in response - he lies down to the drift and just ignores the attacks.
Stas today started to protest as soon as he got on the boat, even before the start procedure, and even tried to protest to the judge, Grigory chose the search tactic - he's catching his luck along the whole distance, sometimes it smiles to him, sometimes it doesn't. But it's too early to draw conclusions - the crews have just
started to get used to each other and the boats, let's see what the weather will be next».


The second day of racing started with a nasty little rain. Weather forecast was extremely inconsistent, one weather station, for example, promised yachtsmen air temperature from -5 to +12.
During the second round-robin, the teams clearly adapted to each other and to the boats, and there was a clear tactical fight with the rivals on the course - the skippers tried to outsmart each other in the pre-start fight, and when rounding the mark. Shouting «protest» was also heard much more often on the second day.


The second day ended with a workshop «Philosophy of Spinnaker». In an hour and a half Peter Lezhnin briefly explained to the audience the theory of the wing, shared his knowledge with the comrades about the peculiarities of spinnaker control and setup and answered questions from the audience.

The greatest delight of the participants was the question: «How to untangle a bra?»

On that optimistic note, the yachtsmen postponed serious conversations until the next morning and went to dinner.

Live commentary from the course is available from the organizers of the fourth Yachting_Rus Cup Peter Lezhnin aka Petryxa and Grigory Aksenov aka Bidok:
«In this series of races there is again a lot of work for the judging committee - the wind is choppy and uneven, often the course has to be rearranged. However, this happens every time we race here in Bar - the terrain here is difficult, the wind comes from the mountains, changes several times during the day. For example, today we have canceled races because of the "bora", the wind was strengthening up to 35 knots in the afternoon. And in general, according to the statistics of our meetings, in Montenegro one day out of five we don't race because of the weather - the wind is too strong.

A cool element of our "developurations", i.e. meetings in reality, is the exchange of experiences.

For example, today we organized our third seminar during the regatta - our umpire Veniamin Gusev was telling us about the intricacies of sailing rules. He, of course, stubbornly calls our races "fleet racing with direct judging" and strictly speaking, he's right. But for us, for amateurs, it's a real match race».

So far the results are as follows: Peter Lezhnin - 5 points, Stanislav Shestopalov - 5 points, Maxim Svetlichny - 2 points, Grigory Aksenov - 0 points. Ahead are the finals.

ItBoat editors would like to thank Zlata Bredova for her help. Photo by Zlata Bredova and Julia Shevlyakova

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