The Vassiliki (Lefkas Island, Greece) Watersports Festival is now the biggest in all Greece and one of the few competitions in the world where amateurs can take on professionals for prize money. This past June, in a quality field of Olympic athletes and International Champions, the winners of the dominant classes, Laser and Open Catamaran, were the local teams.
By Yannis Margelis
Jordanis Pashalides and Kostas Trigonis, current Tornado European Champions, but sailing here an F18 Hobie Tiger, put in an impressive 6 firsts out of 7 races, leaving last year’s winners Joe Bennett and Marko Reynolds (also Tiger) in 2nd and Tom Nottingham and Remco Fisher a Dutch/Cypriot team on an F20 Hobie Fox in 3rd. Jordanis and Kostas, with their €1000 winning check, are now headed over to Weymouth, England, to defend their 2007 & 2008 titles at the forthcoming Tornado class Europeans, while Joe and Marko and determined to improve their result at the forthcoming Hobie Tiger Europeans in Lake Como, Italy.
Adonis Bouyouris, former Greek National Champion and Radial World Champion, topped the leader board for the Laser class 2 points ahead of his compatriot Alexis Katsios and a further 2 points ahead of Alastair Nichol from the UK in 3rd.
Virginia Kravarioti, Bronze medalist in the Yngling class at the Bejing/Quindao Olympics, took the prize money in the Laser Radial class, edging UK representative Eve Brinsley into 2nd and her Yngling team mate Sofia Papadopoulou into 3rd.
David Barker and David Mather took the honors in the Open Dinghy fleet on a Laser 2000 and Stratos Kosmoglou and Pavlos Dimitriadis in the Hobie 16 fleet.
Tony Dudley and his crew on the J24 ‘Jungle’ narrowly squeezed out Neil McRoberts on his Dehler Optima 101 ‘Leona’ into 2nd with Bob Bennett of Felixstowe also on a Dehler 101 (Das Boot) into 3rd in the one day Yacht race around the small island of Arkoudi off the Lefkas coast.
The windsurfing side of the event had in 1st place Max Rowe (UK) in his first ever competition win, with Andy (Bubble) Chambers in 2nd and Chris Hartley, Club Vassiliki’s beach manager in 3rd.
The Festival included the Miss Bikini competition, attended by 2,000 people, a Greek cultural night of folklore dancing, a Harp concert, a mountain bike race and a BMX competition as well.
At the Opening Ceremony 6 Greek Olympic sailors presented the local school with a gift of 2 RS Tera’s from the organizers and the major sponsor of the event Wildwind Holidays. The village is already anticipating its kids representing Greece at the future Olympic regattas.
“Although we are a little disappointed that the wind didn’t fill in enough for a decent windsurfing event, the 7 race series for the sailors was superb, the evenings’ social program an absolute success and the feedback from everyone is that they will be returning next year with all of their friends, said Festival Organizer Simon Morgan. “We are looking forward immensely to seeing the Festival on Sky Sport Watersports World program in the near future.”
