Kékszalag (Blue-stripe) is told the most grandious, lake-based regatta within Europe. This Balaton tradition goes back to 1934, when the first regatta was taken place. This year more than 600 yachts entered the game and were competing during the two-days, 80 miles (150km) long route.

The recent Kékszalag appreciated good and interesting weather conditions the last weekend.

The fleet started Friday 0900am, and the majority of them arrived to the finish by Saturday late afternoon. Abandonment, accident rate was ignorable. This is remarkable, since the official wind forcast was a fair hit. The Hungarian National Meteorology forcasted light winds by Friday, and fresh winds with gusts following the sunset - a rear phenomenon in this region. In fact the regatta found these conditions in good correlation, when there were chances for technical problems, injuries to ships. Fortunately no such news have arrived so far.

Jóhajó my friend's, Gábor Zalai's yacht of class Elliott 770, arrived to the finish the 104th place in rank, at about 0415am. Within the class Jóhajó gained the second place. We can remember just a few Kékszalag, where we could run along the full distance in such short time. We assume that we could really be happy with a result, if we had been registered at the 55-77th place finally. Though the night-time, stronger wind perhaps offered better speeds for a good deal of taller yachts, ... should we still satisfied with this placement?!

You can find some of my photos shot at the event.

Results