Round lake Balaton 2017 – 49. Kèkzalag: D35 Festiplay 1st

D35 photo Joó Ferenc Jr. Rest of imagess Kèkzalag 2017 – Official web , full gallery & complete results at www.kekszalag.hu.

Light wind conditions for this year “Kèkzalag” or Lake Balaton round in Hungary, where the 2011 Worlds were held organized by our friend Sanyi Roka.  Like Lake Gèneve Bol d’Or the Kekzalag is a well known traditional race in Europe, and target for the big cats to win the Blue Ribbon.  This year a D35, Festiplay skippered by Litkey Farkas won ahed 50/50 Opel, the double mast beast. Third place for an SL33, Black Jack.
The foiling GC32 RSM finished 8th overall.

These Lake races is hard to beat the D35s, even with breeze the Swiss giants are almost untouchable as seen in this year Bol d’Or where some foiling cats had the chance to put the flight mode into practice but couldn`t beat Alinghi D35, check that report here.

3pt TNZ Js are somehow draggy for super light wind conditions, and maybe a refined 4pts Z solution can be a good compromise for light winds, as we experience in the A-Class.

Still beating a D35 is a challenge, but the Kekzalag is another good laboratory to design and test the overall allround solution.

The D35 finished 18 mins ahead of double rigged 50/50 and 20 ahead of the SL33 , which showed great performance, Roland Gaebler , a usual participant of the Balaton race was onboard the SL33 floating mode.  (Remember the SL33 were the platforms used by TNZ to develop the AC72 flight for 2013 Cup)

Top ten below, Full results here