A-Class Worlds 2017 @Sopot, Day 4: Steve Brewin extends lead

Images by Gordon Upton and Helena Darvelid .  Official and great images by Sail Spotting here (cannot repost which such watermark..)  Click pics for H! & Slideshow, specially first one by Gordon from Bruce Mahoney . Best shot so far, Bruce also got the best one from Punta Ala 2015 —-

A-Class Sopot Worlds 2017, Day 4
 3 races held today to sum 8 total for the championship held in light & shifty wind conditions, where many top contenders got caught in the wrong side of the course.

The only scoring top 5 was the current leader, Steve Brewin. The Australian former World Champ showed he controls every aspect of A-Class racing, from pure speed upwind foiling the first day, big waves the next and 5 knots drifting.  4 , 2 & 1 for Brewin to establish a 16pts gap with Tymek Bendyk (1, 47, 5) in second place overall. Kuba Surowiec also manages to keep low scores today with 5,10, 7 to defend a third overall.

Manolo Calavia was caught in one of the big shifts to finish 55th in race 7. Instead of going berserk and with enormous pressure as he already had an ocs to discard in the qualys, Manolo came back with a 2nd place behind Steve Brewin to keep his title chances open.

Tomorrow with one more race he will be able to discard the 55th, and he will need a 10th race he might caught current leader. The hunt is not easy though as he needs to win both and Brewin to place higher than 5 (current discard) in both .

Anything can happen, but the Aussie A-Cat Master will have plenty of option to cover Calavia and defend lead.

Silver fleet is led by local Tymoteusz Cierzan and his Flyer.  1,2 & 1 to lead over another youth, Niklas Lange for Germany who also scored  two excellent races : 17, 1 & 2.

Some might complain on the weather conditions, but for defining a World Title you need some extra challenges, and Sopot is providing all the ingredients to crown the very best Champion this fleet can offer.

Tomorrow is final day of the 2017 Worlds, high winds expected and we hope they can at least complete one more race.

Sopot 2017 Worlds Links:
– Official Worlds web aclassworlds2017.pl
– Live results source Worlds FB
– IACA Fb

Full Results at 2017.sailingnet.pl/aclassworlds2017/results.html
Top 10 after 8 Races:

Pos Sail Number Helm Tot Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 F5 F6 F7 F8
1  AUS 4 (62) Steven Brewin 13 1 1 3 -5 1 4 2 1
2  POL 15 (2) Tymoteusz Bendyk 29 5 3 2 1 12 1 -47 5
3  POL 41 (51) Jakub Surowiec 31 2 3 2 2 -11 5 10 7
4  NZL 270 (59) Dave Shaw 39 8 2 1 2 2 7 17 -23
5  AUS 88 (108) Darren Bundock 47 1 1 9 7 10 3 -44 16
6  POL 1 (19) Jacek Noetzel 48 7 4 6 3 5 2 21 -29
7  POL 17 (26) Maciej Żarnowski 50 5 8 3 3 55 8 -33 6
8  USA 311 (146) Bruce Mahoney 56 9 6 8 5 18 -26 1 9
9  NED 75 (86) Coen De Koning 63 4 4 11 8 7 -20 15 14
10  NED 7 (25) Mischa Heemskerk 70 2 29 4 6 16 10 -42 3
11  ESP 11 (23) Manuel Calavia 71 3 (ocs) 1 1 3 6 55 2