It has been a weekend of light sea breeze in the bay of Piran, but still the Melges 24 fleet, composed  of twenty-five boats from eleven countries, managed to complete a whole series of scheduled nine races. 

The fight for the podium has been tough until the very last race as the top teams were all tied in a bunch of points. With partial scores of 6.,3.,2. the American entry War Canoe of Mike Goldfarb managed to preserve the overall lead and take the regatta win.

“We are extremely happy with this result. We have been training a while in the USA with the events of Miami and Charleston before coming here. We plan a very busy season with the Melges 24 that is going to include both the Worlds in Victoria, Canada and the Europeans in Riva del Garda, Italy. For this reason it was essential to start measuring ourselves with the European fleet, to start knowing the teams and to perform well on Garda Lake. We will meet again in Torbole," said Mike Goldfarb, owner and driver of War Canoe. Aboard the American boat in Portoroz were also Morten Henriksen, Mark Strube and David Brink.

Estonian team Lenny seemingly put itself out of contention when finishing 18th in the penultimate race. But then they charged back to third place in the last race only to fall three points short of the top spot.

“We are actually surprised with this result, we hadn’t been sailing since the Worlds in Helsinki last year and we have also some new members in the crew. Beginning with such a success is unbelievable," commented Tõnu Tõniste, helmsman of Lenny.

“We will be competing in five events in total in 2018 and our top event will be the Europeans on Garda Lake. Before that, we will have some training on Garda, especially with the event of Torbole, to start testing the race course and measuring with the fleet. The Europeans will be an awesome event!" The crew of Lenny included also Ants Haavel, Tammo Otsasoo, Kristen Pugi and Maiki Saaring.

Bronze medal went to the reigning World Champions on board of Gian Luca Perego’s Maidollis, very consistent all through the series but penalized by a black flag disqualification on Saturday. The top five is completed by Taki 4 with Niccolo Bertola in helm and FGF Sailing Team in charge by Robert Bakoczy.

YC Marina Portorož, Melges 24