winners; Hamish Pepper with Steve Mitchell; Francesco Bruni, taking time off from his Luna Rossa duties as helmsman of Luna Rossa to sail with Nando Colaninno; the remarkable Augie Diaz, the 2016 Star World Champion who, aged 64, was this year’s European Champion, once again teamed up with Robert Scheidt’s former crew, Bruno Prada; plus Eivind Melleby/Joshua Revkin and another past SSL winner George Szabo sailing with Canada’s Roger Cheer. While Lake Garda, Sydney Harbour,


San Francisco Bay, the Solent and Newport may be regular bucket list venues for sailors, Nassau’s Montagu Bay really should be there too. The first day of Star Sailors League Finals racing had to be canned due to a lack of wind, but on the second day it was gusting at 25kt+ as a front arrived, the final race that day seeing two broken rigs and one sailor left swimming for his boat. For the final three days the mid-high


teen trade winds resumed, as competitors enjoyed sailing Nassau’s azure blue waters, which are also incredibly warm, as Montagu Bay is mostly no more than 10-15ft deep. At this near-perfect champi- onship venue (which the ever-knowing Star class has used regularly for ever) the race committee has the option of racing on the bay or further out where there is more exposure to the big Atlantic waves. For those coming from the northern


hemisphere and early December’s first snowfall, the Bahama’s 28-30°C tempera- tures were a strong attraction… along with the US$ 200,000 prizemoney on offer. Once again the finals stuck to their excel-


lent knock-out format. This comprises four opening days of qualifying for the full fleet. The winner of qualifying then progresses directly to the finals and the runner-up to the semi-finals. Boats finishing third to 10th compete in the quarter-finals, the bottom 15 going home. In both the quarters and semis the bottom three finishers are elimi- nated. These last rounds are all fresh start (ie no points are carried forward), single race affairs, all held on the final Saturday – a refreshingly simple format. The whole event is televised live on


Facebook and YouTube, hosted this year by Peter Lester, Star silver medallist man mountain Mark Covell and Shirley Robertson with a guest appearance from the Star Sailors League’s honorary presi- dent, Dennis Conner. Class act throughout qualifying were


Robert Scheidt and Henry Boening. With day one blown out, on the second day the five-time Olympic medallist and his crew claimed the first race and after four races and with one discard applied, led by two points from Mendelblatt and Faith. Diaz and Prada made easy work of the


25kt+ conditions of the day’s final race, which they won, playing it safe by reach- ing down the runs as others pushed harder resulting in damage –with a dismasting for Pepper and Mitchell. Meanwhile, 2017


Opposite: Star of the moment… Brazilian world champion Jorge Zarif teamed up in Nassau with Pedro Trouche, the pair switching on the afterburners on the last day leaving their gilded rivals wondering where they’d gone. In 2013 the younger Zarif pulled off the extraordinary feat of winning the junior and senior Finn world titles in the same year… Another Finn sailor, current junior Silver Cup holder Ondřej Teplý (left) and his crew Antonis Tsotras are finding out what happens when you drive a boomed-out Star jib underwater… this time the rig stayed up


propelled them from a lowly 14th to make the quarter-final cut comfortably in 7th. Similarly, but less dramatically, Lööf


winner Frithjof Kleen had to haul back onboard his Italian helm Diego Negri, who had propelled himself overboard while carrying out a penalty turn. Day three, again on the offshore course,


but this time in a more sedate 12-18kt, saw Mendelblatt and Faith momentarily pull into the lead overall, though this had more to do with Scheidt and Boening scoring one deep result they were forced to count. In fact, ‘star’ performers over the day’s


three races were Zarif and Trouche. Zarif’s Finn training was proving very


useful: ‘In the free pumping conditions we had, well, I am from the Finn and that is of course one of the most important things we do. We tried to pump and rock as much as we could, although you still have to play the waves and shifts as well.’ Anyone who saw footage online of the


dynamic duo in action could see exactly what Zarif was saying… and their 4-1-2 now elevated them to third place overall. Elsewhere in the fleet Francesco Bruni’s


hopes were dashed when his boat was holed in a port-starboard incident by an oncoming Šime Fantela. Bruni had to stand down for the rest of the day while his boat was fixed. The final day of qualifying belonged


completely to Scheidt and Boening, with three bullets from four races, finally having shaken off Mendelblatt and Faith to end qualifying 22 points ahead, with Negri and Kleen another 10 points behind in third. Also on a charge was former Whitbread


Round the World Race and Louis Vuitton Cup winner Paul Cayard, celebrating the 30th anniversary of his own Star World Championship win in 1988. Cayard attributed his success to a rig


overhaul the previous evening. ‘Basically I eased the intermediate shrouds one turn, which was enough to allow me to pull the upper shrouds on harder without flatten- ing out the main. ‘I had originally put them on 74, which


is a standard setting, but I think this mast is a little softer than what I am used to and it didn’t work,’ he explained. ‘The small change made a big difference.’ On the last day of qualifying all eyes


were now focusing in the vicinity of 10th place. A 2-1-3-14 for Cayard and Lopes


and his Italian crew Edoardo Natucci started the day 11th, but three results inside the top 10 left them 8th. Lars Grael and Samuel Gonçalves, who had won two races earlier in the series, just squeaked in after an OCS in the first race. Berecz and his veteran Czech Finn sailor crew Michael Maier were not so fortunate, losing to Grael/Gonçalves on countback. Going into the final day Scheidt and


Boening were the obvious hot favourites. However, something of a tradition has developed in the Star Sailors League Finals for the qualifier winners then being unable to follow through… Sure enough, even the Brazilian masters


had no answer to Zarif and Trouche. First they won the quarter-finals, a round that saw Cayard/Lopes, Grael/Gonçalves and Lööf/Natucci all eliminated. The young Brazilians next won the


semi-finals. Now Mendelblatt/Faith finally went out, despite finishing the single race overlapping with Melleby/Revkin. Also out were French duo Rohart and Pierre- Alexis Ponsot and Poles Mateusz Kusznierewicz and Dominik Zycki. This left the four-way finals as a fight


between the two dominant Brazilian teams plus Negri/Kleen and Melleby/Revkin. In this Zarif/Trouche completed their hat- trick ahead of Scheidt/Boening to claim the 2018 finals title. ‘We completely reset our mast yesterday


and the changes worked pretty well for us,’ explained Zarif. ‘We had good starts, great upwind speed and for sure that made the job less difficult!’ Remarkably he and his crew are the first winners of the Star Sailors League Finals to be less than 40 years old… While the event is not the Olympic


Games, nor is it a world championship, the calibre of the competing sailors is unparallelled and both Zarif and Trouche were hugely proud: ‘The Star Worlds and the other championships are much older, but the level is much higher here and I am competing against my biggest idols. ‘To be able to sail against Robert,


Mateusz, Freddy – all these guys I grew up watching on TV in the Finn and the Star, is amazing. Honestly, I only started sailing because of these guys…’ See you here in December!


James Boyd (is back on the beach) q SEAHORSE 47


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