Italian Open (56 Campionato Nazionale)

Italian Open 2016

With two teams from the Netherlands we travelled this year to Lago di Bracciano to sail the Italian Open 2016 in the last weekend of August. Since the lake is only 30 km away from Rome, we combined sailing with a city trip to also see something of the beautiful city Rome and get to know some history and culture from Italy. It became a trip to never forget!

We arrived at Sunday evening and parked the boats at the club where we were welcomed very kind. Since the races would only start the next Thursday, we had 3 days to visit Rome and prepare ourselves for the races. During these 3 days, there sadly happened a lot in Italy, an earthquake and several small fires we could see in the smoke rising in the background. This meant for two Italian teams that they could not come. However, we were very happy to see 20 boats joining us at the start of the Italian open!

Since it was the end of August, the wind system, which normally starts around 13:00 hours came later around 15:00 hours. This meant racing until late in the afternoon! The first day we were not prepared for this and forgot to take something to eat with us resulting in very hungry Dutch sailors becoming 1st and 2nd in the last race that day. The other races were all very tight and at the end of Day 1, Hylke and Jori were leading the pack of 20 boats. Many Italians were the first day sailing with a 420 spi and 470 spinnaker boom. However, we proofed that this was not faster and we could see that many boats were very unstable downwind since the shape and pressure point is not at the right place for an FJ.

The next days we started again around 15:00 hours but this time we had learned from our mistake and took something on board to eat. The wind was very stable from the southwest and we could sail 3 beautiful races. Many Italians used the normal FJ spinnaker again and noticed this was not slower than the 420 spinnaker. Sadly for us we counted the timing at the last start wrong, starting 3 seconds to early and getting an OCS.. This gave an opportunity for the others to close the gap to us to only 2 points. At the end of day 2 Hylke and Jori were in the lead with 10 points followed by Antonio and Anna with 12 points, on 3rd place were Magdalena and Gianluigi with 15 points. So still, everything had to be decided on the last day. The second day of racing was finished with a lovely dinner cooked by the Italians themselves with some homemade red wine :)

At the last day we were hoping that the wind would start around 13:00hours so we could leave not so late. However, this was false hope, the wind came again around 15:00hours. Still two races were sailed, both won by Hylke and Jori, to secure their first place and first championship win of them together. Antonio and Anna secured the silver medal and Magdalena and Gianluigi bronze.

We want to thank the Italian FJ class and the club for organising this wonderful event! We enjoyed it very much! A special thanks for the people who made the pasta’s we could eat when we came from the water and the tasteful dinner. In addition, we were very happy to see so many Italian FJ sailors and many said they want to come some time to the Netherlands as well.

Hylke Sasse