The Russian J/70 Sailing League is rolling, and Sochi provided a great stage to launch the most ambitious sailing project ever for the Russian Sailing Federation. During the three days of racing, Sochi’s weather provided sailors with a lot of surprises—some pleasant and others not so pleasant. The regatta started with great weather on Friday (sunny, windy), and the race committee managed to run eight races. However, the next day, it was beautiful and clear but no wind. On Sunday, the forecast promised a decent breeze in the early morning and fading by the second half of the day. Fortunately, the race committee decided to start at 8am in the morning. The third day of racing was not easy. In the morning the wind was fresh, but then it turned completely sour, with less wind plus rain. The last batch of teams had to spend over two hours on the water waiting for the start. With two wins on Friday, the ARTTUBE team’s young helmsman, Valeria Kovalenko, sailed well all weekend in the challenging conditions to take the overall win for the first regatta. Her team included Alexander Bozhko, Lisovenko Igor and Sergei Avdonin. The second place team was Yacht Club Seven Feet (Ilya Ermakov, Anna Sannikov, Andrei Aniskin Marat Ahmedov). Then, taking third place was the Lord of Sail Team-Europe (Vyacheslav Ermolenko, Yuri Popov, Natalia Kravets and Stanislav Georgiev). The fitness partner for the League, X-FIT, had the Russian Sailing Federation President (Vladimir Silkin) as the skipper and had a crew that consisted of Olympic champions in Atlanta 1996: brothers Eugene and Igor Matvienko. This team was the only one to finish in the top three in all races held (including four third places and one victory in the last race). The second phase of the J/70 Russia Sailing League will take place in Moscow on May 20-22. For more Russian Sailing Federation league information, visit http://rusyf.ru/.

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